Acadia National Park
Scroll DownAcadia is the northeasternmost National Park in the U.S. Tucked away on the coast of Maine, it’s not particularly close to any major cities, but still manages to consistently finish each year as one of the 10 most visited Parks. It’s an easy place to spend time in, and because of that I decided to visit it with my mom.
Truthfully, I’d never given Maine much thought. But that’s the best part about visiting every U.S. National Park - it forces you to discover parts of the country you normally wouldn’t. If you live in the northeast, Acadia is kind of close to major cities out there, if you consider 4.5 hours north of Boston to be close.
If you’re flying to Acadia, you have two airports to choose from: Portland, ME or Bangor, ME. Portland is a bit under 3hrs from the park, Bangor is a bit under 1. The cheapest option was for me to fly to Portland a day early and just pick mom up in Bangor.
This was actually one of the more amusing parts of the trip: Every since I’d moved out west I’d wondered if I’d ever do this, but I ended up with a plane ticket going from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. Mainers thought it was pretty hilarious. Every airport worker I talked to was extremely confused.
Before getting to Acadia though, I have to cover two important things.
💀 A Taste of Horror
If you’re like me, your ears perked up when you heard the name Bangor. This sleepy little town is home to Maine’s most famous resident: Stephen King.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for reading, and King was the only author my mom consistently tolerated. In our basement was a decent sized bookcase filled shelf after shelf of his novels. These weren’t the best books for kids, but I loved every single one of them.
Oddly enough, King is fine with people knowing where his house is. It’s a sizable property, completely nondescript except for the custom iron-wrought fence with spiders and bats built into it. From what I’ve read, there are two houses on the property. The main house is being turned into a literary archive and writers workshop, and the one behind it is where the Kings actually live.
Nothing is open to the public - this is a man’s house. But King doesn’t have any problems with people stopping by to take photos of it, and some people occasionally see him around there. If you’re a serious superfan, there are Stephen King tours around Bangor that will take you to the things around town that King has confirmed inspired his stories: the storm drain from It, the truck stop from Trucks, etc. Hell, even Bangor International Airport was featured in The Langoliers, which is a masterful short story with a terrible movie adaptation.
Mom and I were just normal fans though, so we walked on over, took a photo, and went out to get some lobster on our way to Acadia.
🦞 Maine Lobster
I’ll keep this short: Maine lobster is fantastic, but I’m not a foodie and don’t think it’s worth flying out here for. Maine lobster is famous worldwide for being tender and high-quality, mostly due to the cold waters in the region produce firmer, juicier lobster meat. Lobster is the lifeblood of Maine - the tiny state fishes over 80% of all lobster sold in the country.
You’ll see lobster served up in a lot of different ways: ice cream, enchiladas, dumplings, chowder… the list goes on. The most common option though is the lobster roll, a warm bun stuffed with lobster meat and usually a side of fries. There’s some subtlety in the roll; some places will ask if you want it Maine style or Connecticut style.
Connecticut is one of those states I frequently forget is even a part of my country, and I definitely didn’t know it had its own cuisine. But here’s the difference: Maine style lobster rolls use cold (but cooked) lobster meat, and toss it with mayonaisse. Connecticut style uses warm meat, no mayo, and comes with a cup of melted butter to pour over it.
Connecticut style might sound like the answer, but I personally loved the Maine way of doing things.
Entering Acadia
If you don’t look too closely at a map, Acadia might seem to be on the mainland, but it’s actually on a vaguely heart-shaped piece of land called Mount Desert Island. Most of Maine’s coast is littered with miniscule islands, and Mt. Desert is the largest of them. In fact, it’s the second largest island in the eastern U.S., right behind Long Island, NY.
Starting in the 1890s, the island was a getaway for the ultrawealthy (this is also a theme for Biscayne National Park in Florida), and they built massive houses that they referred to as ‘cottages’. In the early 20th century, John Rockefeller Jr. (son of John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest American of all time) decided that car traffic on the island was ruining its beauty and serenity, and paid out of pocket to have 50+ miles of roads built just for horse-drawn carriages and people walking on foot.
Does this sound like the ultrawealthy throwing money at minor problems? I mean, it is. But I wouldn’t be so quick to judge Rockefeller Jr. - he was extremely passionate about conserving nature and played a major part in establishing not only Acadia, but Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, Yosemite, and Mesa Verde National Parks. The story of him and Grand Teton National Park is a crazy one worth looking into.
In the middle of all this, Acadia became a National Park. Rules were a bit different back then, so Rockefeller Jr.’s construction all happened after the land fell under federal protection. The result is a Park that’s fairly accessible to all kinds of people.
The Park also covers a peninsula to the northeast of the island, and a few smaller islands further out in the ocean. All of our time was focused on the eastern end of Mount Desert, where most of the sights are.
💥 Thunder Hole
When driving into the eastern side of Mt. Desert, you come to a fork in the road. Stay left, and continue towards the town of Bar Harbor. Turn right, and enter Acadia’s Park Loop Road.
Many national parks have loop roads, but Acadia’s is a bit different in that it’s one way. You don’t see a sign for a trailhead/viewpoint until you’re actually at it, so it’s in your best interests to drive pretty slow (also known as following the speed limit).
Parking is a contentious topic in Acadia – the lots are usually small, and there’s not a lot of room to wait for people to come back to their cars and leave. The park adamantly insists they’ll tow vehicles parked on the shoulder, and people do it anyway.
When we entered the park, we were lucky enough to find an open spot at one of my favorite sights….Thunder Hole.
Thunder Hole is a strange section of the island coast where waves rush in, get trapped between two rock ridges, and slam into a small cave. The result is that these massive waves are funneled into a small space, and hit the cave with an explosive BOOM. All of this happens at the bottom of a small cliff, and most of the time the waves are forceful enough to shoot up the cliff and keep going another 20 or 40+ft inland, drenching absolutely everyone nearby.
You can sense the power of the ocean as soon as you get out the car. All of the coasts I saw in Acadia were pretty peaceful, but this is not the word to describe Thunder Hole. Walking towards the cliffside, you can almost feel the tide pulling the air itself down. The entire horizon is a living, breathing this, shaking your perspective with every inhale and exhale.
Maybe I was preoccupied with making sure my mom was having a good time, but I didn’t ever wonder why almost all the observers at Thunder Hole were so far back from it. There were railings and some viewing platforms closer to the edge, why not take a closer look?
Seconds after arriving, a wave came in and there was a very distinctive low rumble from the bottom of the cliff. Some small sprays of water came up over the edge shortly after it.
“Ah, there’s the boom!” my mom said.
I thought it was pretty cool. Hell, I was really enjoying this moment. The weather was perfect, there were 6 or 7 other people with us at this viewing platform, we were all just soaking in the beauty of the island. We hung around for a bit, listening to the frequent booms that came with every wave, and that’s when I took a closer look at the water.
It couldn’t have taken more than 2 or 3 seconds, but it felt like everything was in slow motion. The horizon rose up in a jagged, uneven line, and the waves seemed to turn a dark, violent shade of blue. It felt like the world had suddenly gone quiet, and everyone on that platform knew that we didn’t have nearly enough time to run to dryer land.
There was just enough time for me to cover my face and shield my camera before we all heard it.
BOOM.
I think the wave was forceful enough to push over a small child, and it was definitely big enough to soak straight through my clothes. My camera was fine, but everything I was wearing was soaked for the rest of the day.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough-” I said. All of us down at the platform quickly retreated from the cliff edge to continue checking out Thunder Hole.
A lot of locals say the best time to watch/hear the waves is between low and high tide, so I’d recommend checking the times for those if you want to be guaranteed some explosions. When the waves are less extreme, the Park has a series of walkways leading out to the ocean that they open up, but those were underwater for the time I was there.
⛰️ Short Hike, Great Head
A bit further down the park road is a peninsula named Great Head. I can’t begin to imagine how many thousands of jokes this created, but if you want something enjoyable and family-friendly, Great Head is what you’re looking for.
…god dammit…
Great Head borders one side of Sand Beach, and you can easily make a stop on the way to the peninsula. There’s a path through the trees that leads you off to the side and opens up to the massive, serene beach cove. Unlike Thunder Hole, Sand Beach doesn’t face the Atlantic Ocean and is also protected by the Great Head peninsula, so the waters are nice and calm.
The trail is a bit under 2 miles round trip and has a great lookout at the tip of the peninsula where you can see both Sand Beach and the open ocean. If you’ve got stable footing, you can actually climb about 15ft down the tip of the peninsula to a small landing with several tide pools. Every high tide, the ocean brings in new water and organisms, and every low tide the pools are left with small populations of fish and bacteria trapped there.
🏡 Lakeside lunch at Jordan Pond
If Thunder Hole and a short hike have you feeling hungry, you’re in luck! In his quest to keep cars outside of the carriage roads, Rockefeller Jr. also constructed two “gate houses” within the park. These houses were at the points where the road and carriage roads connected, and prevented anything motorized from passing through their gates.
One of these, the Jordan Pond House (named for the large pond it’s alongside), now has a restaurant conveniently located in it. And people are very, very passionate about the popovers here.
The popovers are good – as good as bread filled with air can get, really. There’s a small network of trails around Jordan Pond to walk off your lunch/dinner, and the lake is truly a majestic sight to see.
☀️ First light - America’s highest point in the north Atlantic
A good way to either start or end a day in Acadia is to drive up Cadillac Mountain. At 1,530ft above sea level, it’s the highest point on the north Atlantic coast and is the first piece of American land to see the sunrise for part of the year. Gorgeous views of the coastline, Bar Harbor, and the islands in the distance.
🧗 A tougher hike: the Precipice Trail
For some extra excitement in Acadia, there’s the Precipice Trail.
The Precipice isn’t a trail for kids, dogs, or people with unstable footing. Pretty early on, the trail stops at a rock wall and you have to ascend a series of iron rungs hammered into the rock. At this point, Precipice stops being a trail and becomes a climb.
The rungs lead you up to walkways, bridges, and countless ledges that are completely exposed. The ledges are about 6ft wide, with hundreds of feet of dead air directly below them. Not all of them are level either – plenty are tilted downhill and have iron bars hammered into both the wall and ground to keep you from slipping and falling down…down…down.
The Precipice is very similar to “via ferrata” trails in Europe, so if you’ve done one of those you’ll be at home here. You’ll find a lot of articles and videos online talking about how dangerous it is, how to prepare, etc… but it wasn’t as extreme as I personally expected. You don’t need a helmet or harness, so how bad could it be?
One nice thing about this hike is that you can go up via the Precipice Trail, and go down via the Champlain North Ridge and ‘Orange and Black’ trails. They both start at the Precipice parking lot and end at the top of Champlain Mountain. This ensures you see constantly see new terrain, and also don’t have to attempt two-way traffic on the Precipice ledges. The other trails are on fairly flat ground, but are a bit poorly marked.
The only advice I’d give here is to start early and not bother bringing hiking poles. The poles will just get in the way, and the parking lot for this trail is pretty small so you want to get there before everyone else does. My mom was definitely not interested in doing this, so I woke up a bit after sunrise for it. There were a few people already there, but nowhere near as many as I passed going up on the way back to the car.
With all that said, you really shouldn’t underestimate the Precipice. People have died and injured themselves here, you do need to exercise caution.
🐋 Whale Watching
Maine’s coastline happens to be a fantastic place for whale-watching. The Gulf of Maine is home to humpback, finback, and minke whales, and Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company is the main provider of whale watching tours out of Bar Harbor. At $60 for ~5 hours on a boat, it’s a bargain to spend that much time on the water regardless of how many whales you see.
We only saw minke whales, which are ‘small’ (26ft long) and only came up to catch a breath through their blowhole. Since they never came right next to the boat, they almost looked like dolphins from a distance.
I don’t think it’s common to see the stereotypical image of a massive humpback breaching off the coast of Maine, but I’d recommend bringing some binoculars and warm jackets for the ocean wind. Going out on the water is a great way to start a day, and the guides for Bar Harbor Whale Watch are knowledgable and very enthusiastic about what they do.
Summary
Laid back continues to be the best way I can describe Acadia. This is a totally valid vacation spot but if you’re looking for hardcore, long-distance hiking in a National Park, this isn’t the one.
Things I didn’t do, but would like to:
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Go across the ‘Bar Harbor Land Bridge’. For 3 hours at low tide, Bar Island is accessible on foot. As high tide comes in, the strip of land leading to it disappears under the water.
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Go to the Isle Au Haut or any of the other islands only accessible by boat.
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Visit in the middle of fall. Trees were just starting to change color when I went, and Acadia is infamous for gorgeous swaths of autumn color.
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Visit in winter! Acadia seems like a different beast with snow on the ground.
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