Our trip to Acadia was wonderful, and we wished we had more time there. This post serves as our reflections looking back on Acadia – our favorite spots, things that we wished we did, tips for traveling to the park, or things we didn’t like. It can also be used as a guide to the park, with links to more detailed posts if you want to dive in. We’ll definitely revisit Acadia someday. But there are a lot of other…
Southwest Harbor is small town on the southern end of MDI’s west side. Our first taste of it was seeing the harbor itself on the drive in. There are several piers, and one had a small pulloff. It looked so picturesque with boats scattered around, and we just had to stop and take some photos. The harbor is small, so we definitely recommend stopping to take in the views. To us, this was quintessential Maine. Southwest Harbor is also the…
The west side of Mt. Desert Island doesn’t have as many hikes as the east side, and overall the hikes didn’t interest us as much. The one trail that we decided to do on the west side was Beech Cliff Trail. It interested us because, like the Beehive on the east side, this trail features some unique obstacles. In this case, multiple iron ladders. So we woke up in Seawall Campground on our second to last day in Maine, and headed…
Our journey to Isle au Haut and Duck Harbor Campground finally came to a close. We had used up our maximum 3 nights to stay in the campground. So it was time to venture back to Mount Desert Island where we hadn’t yet visited the western half of the island and our next home, Seawall Campground. The weather had been great each day on Isle au Haut, but on the day we left the skies were grey and foggy. As we…
We waffled a bit on whether or not to go kayaking, but only because there’s so much to do in Acadia. We decided to in the end because we wanted more practice as we plan to kayak at many other parks. It gave our legs a rest from hiking, provided great views, and was our closest look at some wildlife. We learned a lot about the park through this experience. None of the water surrounding Acadia is actually part of…
We started off our third day in Acadia with another iconic hike – Pemetic Mountain. Located on the east side of Mount Desert Island, right near Jordan Pond. There are four trail options to the Pemetic summit, and the northwest path (4.2 miles) seemed most interesting to us. The previous day, we hiked the Beehive, which features iron rungs and a small iron bridge. Pemetic has its own unique obstacles – ladders – which sounded fun. We’ll check out another…
There are a lot of trails in Acadia. Since we were only there for 10 days, we wouldn’t have time to hike them all. For our first “major” hike, we decided to combine two very different hikes into a single trip – Ocean Path & The Beehive. You could easily do the hikes individually, but we wanted more of a challenge. The hikes are on the eastern side of Mount Desert Island, only 6 miles from Bar Harbor. Ocean Path…
The well-known philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. made many significant contributions to the landscape of Acadia National Park; one was a system of carriage roads along with 17 unique bridges for visitors to enjoy. Our national parks need more people like that! Carriage roads and hiking trails weave together to provide a variety of routes to explore the rivers and bridges on the East side of the park (Schoodic also has a newly-built network of “carriage roads”). Due to time…
The first night in Acadia, we stayed at the Quality Inn in Bar Harbor (which we highly recommend!). But we were excited about staying in a more rustic spot: Blackwoods Campground. Blackwoods is one of four campgrounds in Acadia, and it’s the only one on the east side of Mt. Desert Island. Thankfully, it was easy to find as we drove on Park Loop Road, and it’s only 5 miles from Bar Harbor. On our drive to the campground, we…
What’s the first thing you do after flying to Bangor, renting a car, driving to Bar Harbor, and then checking into your hotel? For us the answer was obvious: Take a hike on Bar Island, then explore Bar Harbor in search of great food. We visited Bar Harbor numerous times over the course of our trip; this post catalogs our adventures there. Bar Island Trail Bar Island, north of Bar Harbor, is part of Acadia National Park. If you find…