Acadia is Different
Posted on August 6, 2008
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Posted by Daria
Acadia National Park is definitely different from what we’re used to in the way of national parks. Most of it is on Mount Desert (de-SERT) Island, but it only takes up about half of the island’s land, so there are houses and businesses and small industrial sites in among the parklands. On the plus side, that means services are readily available, but on the minus, you never feel really away from it all. When you’re hiking up Cadillac Mountain or biking along a carriage road, you can often hear cars speeding by on nearby roads.
The park has a free shuttle system but unlike the ones at Zion or the Grand Canyon, the roads aren’t closed to other vehicles. They can’t be; there are too many towns, and a lot of locals use the shuttles to get to walking or shopping. As Sierra noted, they’re like riding on city buses.
Staying in the national park campgrounds, Blackwoods and Seawall, did make our visit a little more parklike. And had the weather not consisted of three days of rain and fog, we would have done more than one hike and probably cycled more. Because of the weather we spent more time in town and in the RV.
The most fun we had was on a non-park sailing cruise through fog around some nearby islands. As Stan said, the fog made you feel weightless and brought you miles away from civilization. Another fun thing we did was picking (and eating) wild blueberries along national park hiking trails and roads.
We attended two ranger programs at Acadia, one about birds of prey and one about planets. Both were good, and both were given by rangers. The majority of the programs offered were hikes, many of which began before the free shuttle would get us to their starting points. Many of those and other programs required reservations.
When we ask a ranger the location of one such program, we’re told, “It’s a secret.” Since space is limited, they don’t tell people where it is unless they’ve signed up. So we ask to sign up. The ranger looks in the book and says it’s full, but we can check back right before it starts to see if there are any cancellations. Of course, since we don’t know where it is, we don’t know if we’d have time to get there before it starts. I guess this is the kind of stuff you have to do when you’re the second-most visited U.S. national park, but it seemed stupid to us.
Speaking of crowded, I expected the park to be much more crowded than it was. We had our choice of sites on Thursday morning at the no-reservations Seawall Campground. Many of the inns and hotels on the island had vacancies during the weekend. Was this because of gas prices, the economy? Did people get advanced notice of the bad weather or leave early because of it?
A final note: You get the impression that many people come to Mount Desert Island and never go to the park. When you go to the Grand Canyon, it’s to go to the Grand Canyon, not to hang out in a nearby town. Here, you can hang out in Bar Harbor and never see any of the island’s natural sights.
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Daria: I am Sue’s W’s sister in Seattle, WA. Love your narratives!!! I think Siera is the one who should be writing the book!! She is great! I had to comment on Acadia national Park. Was one of our most favorite trips-we started in Boston and drove up Route 101 or it might have been Route 1 all the way to Bar Harbor. We absolutely loved the small towns; Joe and Matt loved that each town EVERY day of the week had a flea market and/or sale; and we could get lobster dinners for $9.99!!!
I am trying to talk Sue, Ron and my sister Maggie into doing this trip the fall of 2009.
Have a great trip! Enjoy Europe. I am sure you are all going to dance a happy dance to be out of the camper for a couple of months!!!!
We applaud your tenacity of this trip and a small RV; Joe and I tried it for 2 weeks and decided we definitely were not going to be RV travelers when we retired!
Hope the weather improves as you travel down the coast. That part of the seaboard is one of our favorites.
We love Maine’s small coastal towns, too, especially the less commercial ones. Nova Scotia may have Maine beat for coastal beauty, though.