Megan loves to visit National Parks and I love to visit new places, so we decided to see Acadia National park together. Acadia National Park is in Maine, near the town of Bar Harbor. The nearest reasonable airport is in Bangor, 1+ hours from Bar Harbor. Getting into Bangor at the same time was a little tricky as I was flying from Minneapolis and Megan from San Francisco…neither with direct flights. But we figured it out, rented a car and began our drive to Bar Harbor. As we got closer to “Mount Desert Island” it became obvious what the name Mount Desert Island meant. We were surrounded by water, either driving over it on a bridge or next to it on the road. Acadia and Bar Harbor are both on Mount Desert Island, which is “the largest island off the coast of Maine and the second largest (behind Long Island, New York) on the eastern seaboard of the United States”.
Megan and Roxanne Explore Bar Harbor
Downtown Bar Harbor - view towards Atlantic Ocean, Frenchman's Bay
Mr. Lobster downtown Bar Harbor
The town of Bar Harbor gracefully balances being a small coastal town with being the nearest town to Acadia National Park(tourist town). On the Atlantic side of town Frenchmen's Bay with its boats was beautiful, the downtown has a Village Green surrounded by restaurants and retail stores. This is also where the Island Explorer buses hubbed. The buses travel around Mount Desert Island including Acadia National Park. We stayed at the Atlantic Eyrie Lodge and could walk 15 minutes to the village green to get a bus , or one of the buses had a stop at our hotel.
Frenchmen's Bay
Bar Harbor Fire Department adjacent to Village Green
Bar Harbor has a “Bar Island Bridge” that goes to Bar Island that is accessible only during low tide!
Bar Harbor "Bridge"
View of Bar Harbor from Bar Harbor Island
Acadia National Park
Sand Beach....we took the island explorer to the visitor center at Acadia- then did some hiking along Park Loop Road- it was so easy we would hike as much a we wanted and then catch bus when we wanted to see a different part of the park.
We hiked the Beehive Trail. This hike was way harder than we thought but we were so proud of ourselves! We had to climb a lot of the metal rungs....yikes!
Almost to the top of Beehive
Dancer at the summit of the Beehive trail
Jordan Pond is glacier made, pristine lake with mountains surrounding a lot of it. It is stunning.
Jordan Pond House is famous for popovers. We had “tea” there and tried them and thought they were pretty good too.
We rented E Bikes and rode the carriage roads, crossing many of the stone bridges. The 45 miles carriage roads throughout ANP were built from 1913-1940 by John D Rockefeller Jr. He wanted to have roads to ride horses that were free from motorised vehicles. The roads are still motor free, except for certain types of E bikes. There are granite stone guardrails -no picture-are nicknamed Rockefeller's teeth.
One of the17 stone faced bridges on the carriage roads.
Acadia Mountain a spontaneous hike- well worth the view.
We drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point along the North Atalantic Seaboard. It is also the first place to see the sunrise in the U.S. in the winter.
We stopped at L.L.Bean on the way back to Bangor Airport. Fun fact - Acadia staff wore L.L.Bean branded uniform shirts.
We had some extra time in Bangor which is the former home of Stephen King.
On the second leg of my flight home I was on the same flight as Katie! She was doing her regular MBA commute from Chicago.
Acadia National park was a fun place to visit in September. The weather was still good and the tourist services were still running (buses, restaurants, bike rentals). My only wish list item I didn't get was a pass to drive up Cadillac Mountain at sunrise- but we got a pass for the evening- so I was satisfied with that.