Travels: Acadia National Park

Above: Vintage Map of Bar Harbor, Maine – prints available at: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/featured/vintage-bar-harbor-map-pd.html

For seven years I lived on Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. In fact one of our neighbors was land owned by the Nature Conservancy and overseen by the park service.

Note: This site is supported by sales of fine art prints from the portfolio of Edward M. Fielding – Over 6,000 images from the collection which can be purchased on products as well as paper, canvas, metal, acrylic or wood prints and as museum-quality framed and matted artwork. Fine art prints of Acadia, Mount Desert Island and Bar Harbor :

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This is common on Mount Desert Island as the park was created by donated private land and still to this day is interwoven with private land. As one visits the park, they often don’t even realize that sometimes they are sometimes in the park and then out of the park and then back in the park.

Ever visit some place and wonder how it would be to live there year round? That’s how we ended up living on and island off the coast of Maine. After vacationing on Mount Desert Island one summer, my wife decided to check out the job listings at the hospital in Bar Harbor. Lo and behold, up jumped a CFO position, so just for fun she sent off her resume. Long story short, four month’s later we were moving into our new house in Seal Cove on the quietside of MDI.

Moving from the Boston area to what is basically a tourism and fishing community is quite the culture shock. The island does have a mixture of scientists from Jackson Labs, nurses and doctors at the hospital and educators at the College of the Atlantic, but for the most part the islanders are people who have spent generations in the area making a living from lobstering, boat building or serving the blue bloods and tourist who flock to the island each summer.

The few summer months on the island burst with activities and over three million visitors attracted to Acadia National Park wonders and the rugged beauty of the Maine coastline. Hiking the trails, bracing the cold water at Sand Beach, biking along the carriage roads, visiting lighthouses and eating lobster caught by the local fishermen.

It’s non-stop action all summer long. Then late fall hits, the last cruise ships stop dropping off passengers, the kids are back in school and about 90 percent of the shops and restaurants close up, often with the owners heading down to Florida or some place to open up a season shop there.

In the winter time its just the locals going about their business, educating the kids, working on their boats, building luxury sailboats, testing cancer drugs on mice, teaching students, winterizing the large mansions in Northeast Harbor for the Fords, Stawarts, Rockefellers, Mellons and other Richie Riches etc.

Winter on the island is long. There are activities such as ice fishing, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling but the proximity to the ocean keeps the amount of snow and the quality of snow down. Ideal cross-country skiing days on the carriage roads is rare as the wind blows away snow and ice is likely to form. Several years recently the Seal Cove pond’s annual ice fishing derby had to be postponed due to lack of solid ice in February.

These days the fall season seems to be extended later and later and then spring seems to take for ever to show up. A few tourists come around Easter break, perhaps thinking spring has sprung, but usually the weather still isn’t that great on the island. But then in the beginning of June, just the reward of making it through a long hard winter appears in the form of a bright, sunny warm day, as if by magic a load of tourist appear.

Fog is a major weather occurrence on the island also. It is said that for gardeners on the island, you should expect your garden to receive 65 percent of the typical amount of summer sunlight.

Often vacationers visiting the island on a foggy day will drive right by beautiful ocean views not even realizing they are withing a stones throw of the ocean. One side of the island can be socked in with pea soup fog all day long while the other side can be bathed in full sunlight. So it pays to check the weather reports and plan which area to explore based on where the fog isn’t.

After Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor is the main draw on the island. It’s the largest town on the island and is beautifully situated with a natural sheltered harbor surrounded by outer islands. One of which you can walk over to during high tide.

Bar Harbor is full of hotels, rental units, two movie theaters, cute old buildings and shops, an ocean front cliff walk, t-shirt shops, ice cream stores, YMCA, a marina, boat tours on an old windjammer, restaurants and parks. It is a charming town but busy and a few recent developments have damaged the small town feeling by replacing a street of small fishing cottages with a massive hotel but overall if you are coming from a big city, you probably wouldn’t notice.

Escape to the Quietside

If you want to see a less commercialized section of the island, you need to get over to the “quietside” of the island where the towns of Southwest Harbor and Tremont provide a better look at traditional “downeast” Maine life with lobstering and boat building. Here you’ll find less tourist, a lot less cruise ship tours and more authentic experiences. While the typical “see it in one day” type tourist is up on Mount Cadillac or on Sand Beach looking for a parking spot, on the quiet side you can enjoy a kayak tour of classic rugged Maine harbors, eat a lobster roll on a fishing dock, or take a boat tour out to one of the barrier islands.

Tremont/Bass Harbor Recommendations: Bass Harbor Lighthouse, Ships Harbor Nature Trail, Wonderland Trail (tide pools) and Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard. Further down in Seal Cove along Cape Road you’ll find a town boat launch, picnic area and a nice stretch of road along the shore that few see. Park the car and take a stroll.

Northeast Harbor is another great spot away from the crowds in Bar Harbor. Northeast Harbor has a marina where you can grab a ranger led tour of lighthouses or tour one of the two beautiful gardens – Asticou Azalea Garden and the Thuya Garden.

Southwest Harbor is another laid back harbor on the quiet side with an active harbor of boat builders like Hinkley and lobster fishermen. You can drop the kids off at sailing camp or explore the little shops and restaurants such as Eat A Pita for fresh salad in a pita pocket or Sips for wine by the glass and fine dining. Beals Lobster pound serves up casual take out clam shack type fare. There is even a Coast Guard station with a small PX if you have a military ID.