On our first full day back in the US we went into Acadia National Park. It was a rather cold, dark and overcast day and the fall foliage was just starting to come in. It really was not a very good day to enjoy the outdoors so we went to Bar Harbor after lunch. Bar Harbor consisted almost exclusively of overpriced tourist restaurants and souvenir shops. We walked around a bit and a few of the restaurants were kinda cute but eating in them would have easily cost $80-100. Even a fish and chips was around $20. The exception was a lone Subway Sandwich shop but it would have been a bit sad eating a Subway Sandwich when one is surrounded by lobster restaurants.
Instead we went to one of the many Lobster Pounds (restaurants) on the road between Bar Harbor and Ellsworth. Funny thing though is that the three we went to were either closed or had run out of lobster by the time we arrived a bit after 6 P.M. This was quite disappointing, especially considering that many of them didn’t even open until 2 P.M.
Eventually we arrived at the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound which was both open and full of customers. Olivia hates any kind of seafood and Holly isn’t a big fan of lobster so I went to get a single lobster dinner and Holly would cook some food. I went in to the counter and found that instead of having a set price for a lobster dinner you tell them how big of a lobster you want and they charge you $18 a pound plus $7 for a set of fixings including bread, an ear of corn, and Cole Slaw. I asked for a 1 ½ pound lobster and they open up a fridge, pull out a live lobster, weigh it, put it into a bag with a number on it and a guy took it outside and put it into one of the pots of boiling seawater. 20 minutes later they took out the lobster, put it in an open cardboard tray along with the fixings. I took it back to our RV. Holly had made some fried potatoes, spinach and we had left over shredded Costco roast chicken. I shared the lobster with Holly and the bread with Olivia. The lobster was quite tasty with the drawn butter they included, sweet and moist. The lobster eating lesson we got on the lobster cruise came in handy as we now knew how to efficiently take apart the lobster for ease of eating. OK, scratch one off the bucket list, had an authentic Maine Lobster dinner at a lobster pound! After that it was back to the Walmart for the night.