In Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine, the National Parks Service just completed flossing "Mr. Rockefeller's teeth," the nickname given to the large chunks of granite edging roads built by John D. Rockfeller Jr. The "teeth" were in desperate need of a cleaning to remove vegetation that had grown between the boulders since the NPS took over the roads in 1960.
The cleaning is part of a $6 million renovation effort to return the 70 km of gravel roads to full use by hikers, bikers and horse-drawn carriages visiting Acadia's 16,000 hectares of park land.
Over 3 million people a year visit Acadia, America's oldest national park east of the Mississippi River. While the park doesn't offer the dramatic vistas and natural wonders of sites such as Yosemite and Yellowstone parks, it does offer rich forests, low peaks with clear visas, sparkling clean lakes and kilometers of granite coast where the fight between sea and land seems especially clear and fierce. There is also abundant wildlife in the peak and the surrounding waters.