In October, my daughter and I planned a long weekend to visit Acadia National Park in Maine. We were looking forward to beautiful fall weather in order to hike and watch the sunrise in one of the most scenic areas in our country. We rented a car in Portland, Maine and set out for our two-hour drive to Acadia. It was rainy and cold, and that was just the beginning of a weekend that didn’t go as planned.
Despite the cold and the rain, my daughter and I got to Acadia and did a gorgeous hike around one of the lakes in the park. Afterwards, we opted for a late lunch and planned on some rest time and a later dinner. Who knew that Bar Harbor (the town that Acadia resides in) pretty much shuts down at 7 p.m. and a nice, sit-down dinner was out?
We then planned on a very early morning wake up time in order to catch the first sunrise in our country that is best viewed from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia. Well, it turns out that you have to pre-buy tickets to get to Cadillac Mountain and they were all sold out for the whole weekend that we were there. Undaunted, my daughter and I scouted out another spot, parked our car and set out to catch this glorious sunrise. That sunrise happened behind a thick cloud covering and on and off rain showers, so we didn’t actually see it.
Realizing it was likely to be a rainy day, we bought cheap rain ponchos at the nearest grocery store and set out for another gorgeous hike. As soon as we started the hike, the mild rain showers turned into a major downpour. Our rain ponchos saved the day. They also felt as if we were suffocating because they were so cheap and clingy to our skin. We conquered that hike, laughing the whole way. The next morning, we planned a last hike through the woods, following a beautiful creek as part of the path. It turned out that after all of that rain, the creek was more like a small river and we were soaked and muddy within minutes of starting that trail.
Making the Best of a Rainy Day
Sounds like a mostly miserable weekend, right? Wrong! We had a blast. My daughter is a seasoned traveler after having spent a semester at sea while in college. I’m not one to let rain or cold stop me either, so I kept adding layers and off we went. We laughed, we talked, we hiked, we embraced the adventure and chose to control what we could. It turns out that you can’t control the weather, but you can certainly control your gear and your attitude, and that’s what we did.
You can't control everything, but you can control your attitude. #positivity #attitude #stress Click To TweetInstead of a sunrise, we saw a beautiful engagement proposal on top of one of the mountains. We talked to other intrepid hikers and we saw a gorgeous buck, wild turkeys, and other wildlife. We found the local grocery store and loaded up on snacks since any dinner past 7 p.m. was unlikely to happen. We hoped that on our last morning there we might catch that fantastic sunrise and yet, nope, still raining. While driving back to the airport, guess what happened? The sun came out. My daughter and I just laughed. It certainly wasn’t the trip we had planned. It was so much better!
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC