Our first legit trip (and my first travel post!) in almost two years…
Taking place this past July, I couldn’t have been more excited for our babymoon in Maine. A 10 hour roadtrip best driven at night – Charles and I napped throughout the day before departure, cleaned our home, packed the car and hit the road around 2am. A couple pee/walk breaks along the way (a reoccurring theme in today’s post), we made it to my Gram’s house around noon, hit the grocery store to stock up on food and then settled into my family’s cabin.
For the most part, we didn’t do much throughout the week but rest, lounge, eat and visit with family around town and eat some more. But we did manage to schedule in one outing = a day trip to Acadia National Park, located on Maine’s Mount Desert Island.
With summertime in Maine being its most busy tourist season, we initially planned to wake up at 4:30am to hit the road for the two hour drive in order to see the sunrise and avoid the crowds. Unfortunately, with this plan, we (ahem, me, myself and I) did *not* take into realistic consideration that I was pregnant.
Soooo instead what happened was… We had to make three stops along the way for me to use the bathroom and then I got hangry so we stopped to eat breakfast. Sunrise missed but my belly full and feeling no kinds of cranky anymore, we arrived at the park closer to 8:30am (instead of the originally planned 6:30am arrival) to a fairly packed park…
But enough potty talk. Below are postcards from our day at Acadia.
The weather at Acadia on the day we visited was low 70’s, overcast, foggy and drizzly which Charles and I found so refreshing considering we’ve been dealing with hot and humid 80/90 degree weather in the DMV this whole summer so far. A few locals we spoke with while at Acadia consistently commented about how unfortunate the weather was… Some even complaining about the *humidity* but we were like “this is so niiiiice” and “humid?? this isn’t humid at all compared to what we got going on in VA” lol.
Keeping things leisurely, we only planned to hit two trails and the first trail we traversed was the Ocean Path Trail (see photo dump above), a mostly flat 4.5 mile out and back trail. We started at Sand Beach, a small inlet that opens to the Atlantic and followed the trail along the rocky cliffside to Thunder Hole, a deep crevice in the cliffside (see photo with man standing on the ledge), where when the tide comes in with enough force, it makes the sound of thunder. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear the infamous sound but it was worth the stop by.
Afterwards, we ate a couple homemade tuna sandwiches with pickle chips and seltzer water on the side from our car trunk and then drove over to Jordan Pond Path trail (photo dump below). Jordan Pond Path is a 3.1 loop trail follows along the shore of Jordan Pond providing iconic views of steep, glacially sculpted mountains and valley around Jordan Pond. All flat, half of the loop is a dirt trail while the other half is a plank boardwalk, the latter which Charles and I especially enjoyed walking along. While we weren’t able to actually see the mountain tops, I found the fog swirling around them to be pretty magical – serving up major Twilight vibes.
5 Tips for Visiting Acadia National Park In The Summer
1. Get Your Park Entrance Pass Ahead of Time. From May through October, all visitors are required to have a park entrance pass displayed in their car’s windshield. Private vehicle passes are $30, last for 7 days and can be purchased at Recreation.gov. You can also get your entrance passes sold in-person at the park’s Hulls Cove Visitor Center but why make an extra stop when you can save time by getting your pass beforehand.
2. Download the National Park App. Click “Find Your Park”, search for Acadia and then click “Save this park for offline use” on the homepage. Cell service in Acadia is nonexistent in most areas and this app came in handy for us while navigating through the park. The app’s GPS-enabled map not only shows where you are in the park, but also includes points of interest, along with roads, trails, and other information to plan your trip.
3. Pack a cooler of food, snacks and drinks. While Acadia does have one restaurant on site, the Jordan Pond House Restaurant, reservations can only be made at the restaurant each day in person (not online), so pretty much it’s first come, first serve. If you don’t get there right when it opens 11am, be prepared for a 2 hour+ wait. Luckily, we had packed food and snacks to hold us over throughout the day (I ended each hike *ravenous* lol). Also TIP, since the Pond House Restaurant is located right next to the Jordan Pond Trail Loop, Charles and I went to the restaurant first to get our reservation locked in, walked the trail loop for two hours and then came back right on time to get our table. We ordered their house special, Popovers and Hot Tea = a custardy, airy croissant like pastry that came with blueberry jam and their Pond House special blend tea.
4. Be flexible about which trails you take a.k.a. have a back up plan. While Acadia is one of the top-ten most visited national parks, it’s also one of the smallest and most congested. We initially planned to hit the Jordan Pond trail first but ended up circling around the area for 30-45min looking for parking with no success. So we switched up and headed over to the Ocean Path trail area, snagged the first parking spot we found and took our time on that trail before giving Jordan Pond trail another go. We ended up finding parking way down the road from Jordan Pond, walked about 10-15min to get to the trail head but it was worth the extra steps.
5. Make time to explore outside of the park. Mount Desert Island is largest island off the coast of Maine and the second largest (behind Long Island, New York) on the east coast of the US. In addition to Acadia, there are four townships on the island = Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor and Tremont. Of the four, Bar Harbor is by far the most popular town on the island to visit, eat food and/or find accommodations in the area. However, with popularity comes congestion and, having visited Acadia 3 times now, Charles and I tend to avoid the area now due to always having issues find parking. That said, in our past annual visits to Acadia, my family and I have gone sea kayaking with Maine State Sea Kayak in Southwest Harbor, stuffed our faces with lobster rolls at Bar Harbor Lobster Co. (located in downtown Bar Harbor) and The Travelin Lobster (located outside of the downtown area – we much prefer this location, less crowded and shorter wait time on food) and tidepooling at Bar Island.
Hoping you take some time to get outside and hug some trees at your closest national park. #findyourpark
Until next post.
xo, Setarra
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