The 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan is a deeply moving tribute to the nearly 3000 lives lost on 11 September 2001 featuring twin reflecting pools etched with victims' names and immersive underground galleries honouring their stories and legacy.
Maine – Acadia National Park
🏔️ A Landscape Forged by Ice and Ocean
Acadia National Park sits primarily on Mount Desert Island along the coast of Maine, encompassing roughly 49,000 acres of some of the most dramatic and diverse scenery in the entire north-eastern United States. The park owes its extraordinary topography to the last great ice age, when vast glaciers carved smooth granite domes, scooped out freshwater lakes, and sculpted the deeply indented bays and fjord-like inlets that define the coastline today. Cadillac Mountain, rising to 1,530 feet, stands as the highest peak on the eastern seaboard and, for much of the year, is the very first place in the United States to be touched by the sunrise. The interplay of rocky headlands, wave-battered shores, and wooded interior gives Acadia a visual variety that is genuinely rare — within a single day’s exploration, a visitor might move from ocean spray and tidal pools to still reflective lakes and pine-scented ridgelines with sweeping panoramic views stretching deep into the Atlantic horizon.
🚴 Trails, Carriage Roads and Coastal Wonders
One of Acadia’s most distinctive features is its remarkable network of historic carriage roads, commissioned in the early twentieth century by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., who gifted more than 45 miles of these meticulously crafted paths to the park. Smooth and gracefully engineered, the carriage roads wind through woodland and across elegant hand-built stone bridges, offering cyclists, walkers, and horse riders a serene and car-free way to experience the landscape at a leisurely pace. Beyond these, the park maintains over 160 miles of hiking trails ranging from gentle shoreline strolls to exhilarating scrambles up exposed granite faces using iron rungs set directly into the rock — the famous “ladder trails” that have delighted adventurous walkers for generations. The Ocean Path and the Precipice Trail represent two very different but equally rewarding experiences, while Thunder Hole, where Atlantic swells surge into a narrow chasm and explode upward in a roar of white water, remains one of the park’s most viscerally exciting natural spectacles.
🦅 Wildlife, Seasons and the Spirit of the Place
Acadia is richly alive throughout the year, and each season brings its own particular character to the landscape. Spring arrives with migratory songbirds and the first wildflowers pushing through the leaf litter; summer draws the largest crowds, with warm evenings, boat trips to see seals and porpoises, and the chance to kayak among the islands of Frenchman Bay. Autumn is widely regarded as the park’s most spectacular season, when the mixed woodland blazes with copper, amber, and scarlet foliage set against the steel-blue Atlantic — a combination that photographers and artists travel great distances to witness. Winter quiets everything considerably, and the park takes on a spare, elemental beauty, with snow-dusted summits and frozen carriage roads offering snowshoeing and cross-country skiing to those willing to brave the cold. Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs, white-tailed deer move through the woodland, and harbour seals haul out on offshore ledges — reminders that this landscape belongs, first and foremost, to the wild.
A perfect 2-day Acadia itinerary
Day One
- Drive the 27-mile Park Loop Road, Acadia’s greatest hits on a single ribbon of tarmac
- Brave the 13-degree Atlantic at Sand Beach — we paddled, we regretted it, we did it anyway
- Walk the Ocean Path to Thunder Hole and Otter Point for dramatic sea views from pink granite ledges
- Climb South Bubble Mountain for sweeping views over the mirror-clear waters of Jordan Pond
- Drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain for a panoramic view that even we had to admit was rather brilliant
Day Two
- Rise before dawn for the first sunrise on the US eastern seaboard atop Cadillac Mountain — cold, spectacular, worth it
- Visit the Abbe Museum to learn 12,000 years of Wabanaki history before Rockefeller showed up with his chequebook
- Wander the charming streets of Bar Harbor, a former playground of Vanderbilts and Astors, now pleasantly modest
- Swim (actually swim) in Echo Lake — the one body of water on the island that won’t require medical attention afterwards
- Finish at the Wonderland Trail, a gentle coastal loop of tidal pools, periwinkles and crabs with considerably more purpose than us
Day One
🗺️ Tackling the Acadia Loop Road — One Early Morning, Minimal Complaints
With just two days to do justice to Acadia National Park, we decided the sensible approach was to get up at a frankly unreasonable hour and throw ourselves at the Park Loop Road before the crowds arrived. Whether you do it by car or bike, this 27-mile scenic loop is, as the guidebooks rather enthusiastically put it, a must. And for once, they weren’t wrong.
We kicked things off at Sieur de Monts Springs, which sits in a quiet hollow on the eastern side of Mount Desert Island — and is, frankly, one of those places that rewards the early riser. The name, for those who like a bit of history with their morning, traces back to Pierre Du Gua de Monts, the French explorer and coloniser who, in 1604, led one of the first serious European attempts to settle in what is now New England and Nova Scotia. He didn’t exactly stick around, but the Americans kindly remembered him anyway.
The spring itself became the centrepiece of a rather lovely little complex developed in the early 20th century by George Dorr, a Boston Brahmin with the admirable habit of spending his considerable personal fortune on preserving land rather than on yachts. Dorr was, in many ways, the father of Acadia — he and Harvard president Charles Eliot worked tirelessly to protect Mount Desert Island from the sort of industrial development that had ruined much of coastal Maine. In 1916, their efforts paid off when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it Sieur de Monts National Monument. It was redesignated as Lafayette National Park in 1919 — the only national park named after a Frenchman, which must have caused some discomfort — before finally becoming Acadia National Park in 1929.
At Sieur de Monts, we wandered through the Wild Gardens of Acadia, a rather charming little botanical garden established in 1961 that does the admirable job of showcasing native Maine plants in their natural habitat groupings — bog, marsh, heath, and so on. It’s the sort of place that would normally have me suppressing yawns, but even I had to admit it was genuinely rather beautiful at that hour, with the morning light filtering through.
Just beside it sits the original Abbe Museum, a small stone building dating from 1928, which was — and remains — dedicated to the history and culture of the Wabanaki peoples, the indigenous nations who had, quite reasonably, called this part of the world home for somewhere in the region of 12,000 years before anyone from Europe turned up and started renaming things. The museum has since grown considerably, with a larger site opening in nearby Bar Harbour in 2001, but the original building retains a certain quiet dignity.
We also stuck our noses into the Nature Centre, which, in the tradition of all Nature Centres everywhere, contained enthusiastic educational displays and a modest selection of local wildlife information. It does what it says on the tin.
With Sieur de Monts ticked off, we pointed ourselves south along the Loop Road towards Sand Beach — which, given that we were in Maine, rather than the Maldives, was going to require a certain lowering of beach-related expectations.
🏖️ Sand Beach – The Most Beautiful Place You Won’t Swim In
We’d heard about Sand Beach before we even arrived on Mount Desert Island. With a name like that, we weren’t expecting much. Every beach calls itself beautiful. Most of them are lying.
This one wasn’t.
Sand Beach sits tucked into a small sheltered inlet on the eastern side of Mount Desert Island, wedged between the hulking pink granite mountains of Acadia National Park and the jagged Atlantic shoreline that makes you feel very small and slightly nervous. It stretches roughly 290 yards end to end — not enormous, but perfectly formed.
What makes it genuinely unusual is what the sand is actually made of. Roughly 70 percent is composed of broken shell fragments — crushed clams, mussels, sea urchins, and various other creatures who had the misfortune of living near a very energetic ocean. The Atlantic has been hammering this inlet for thousands of years, and the result is this pale, pinkish, slightly coarse sand that crunches differently underfoot and looks, in the right light, almost luminous.
Now. The water.
It looks absolutely glorious. Clear, clean, blue-green, sparkling. Every instinct tells you to wade in. The ocean in summer, right there, beckoning with what can only be described as visual deception on a grand scale.
Here is the actual situation: the water temperature rarely climbs above 55 degrees Fahrenheit — about 13 degrees Celsius for those of us who half-converted to metric against our will. The Gulf of Maine runs cold. Genuinely, properly, punishingly cold, with absolutely no interest in warming up for your benefit.
We watched people go in. The noises they made were not the sounds of people having a pleasant swim.
We paddled. Very briefly. We’re not entirely without backbone.
Spectacular to look at, fascinating underfoot, and bracingly, memorably cold to swim in. Highly recommended. Bring a jumper.
🥾 The Coastal Path – Thunder Hole and Otter Point
From the upper car park at Sand Beach, we set off along the Ocean Path — a three-mile round trip following the eastern coastline of Mount Desert Island south to Otter Cliff. By general agreement, and our own considerable experience of being dragged along coastal walks, it’s one of the finest short walks on the entire eastern seaboard. We didn’t argue.
The path hugs the shoreline closely. To one side, pink Cadillac granite — formed around 420 million years ago — has been sculpted by Atlantic weather into ledges and formations of considerable drama. To the other, the ocean stretches away toward Portugal, entirely unbothered by your presence.
Thunder Hole earns its name honestly. It’s a narrow chasm in the granite where incoming waves compress until the trapped air explodes outward with a genuine boom, sending water spraying up to forty feet in the right conditions. The Park Service has installed viewing platforms and railings, which we appreciated, being the sort of people who prefer their coastal drama at a slight remove.
Worth noting: Thunder Hole is deeply underwhelming at low tide. Check the tide tables. We didn’t, particularly, and received a middling performance.
Otter Cliff marks the southern end — sheer pink granite rising sixty feet straight out of the Atlantic, one of the highest headlands on the eastern seaboard. The views back north toward Sand Beach, mountains behind and ocean in front, are the sort that make you briefly forget you’ve got a blister forming and your knees aren’t what they were.
Three miles, relatively flat, spectacular throughout. Do it
We pulled up at Thunder Hole feeling, if I’m honest, mildly sceptical. It’s a hole. With thunder, apparently. On the day we visited, the sea was behaving itself rather too politely, and for a moment we stood there wondering if we’d been sold a dud. Just a narrow inlet carved into the pink granite shoreline, looking perfectly innocent in the afternoon light.
But here’s the thing about Thunder Hole — and the reason it’s been pulling in visitors to Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, Maine, since the park was established back in 1916 — it’s all about timing. The inlet itself is a natural formation, sculpted over millennia by the relentless pounding of the North Atlantic, which, as oceans go, is not known for its gentle disposition. At the far end of the inlet, tucked down low in the rock, sits a small cavern. When a decent wave rolls in — and on a rough day the Atlantic obliges enthusiastically — the water compresses the air trapped inside and forces it out with a crack that sounds like a cannon going off somewhere in the middle distance. Water can shoot up to 40 feet into the air. The sound carries. You feel it in your chest.
We didn’t get the full performance on our visit. The sea, apparently, hadn’t read the itinerary. But even in its quieter mood, it was easy to see why this particular stretch of the Maine coastline had captivated everyone from 19th-century Romantic painters of the Hudson River School to modern-day tourists with expensive waterproof jackets and a vague idea of what a geology is.
The name, for what it’s worth, needs no committee to explain it. Thunder Hole does exactly what it says. Unlike certain other tourist attractions I could mention.
We continued along the Park Loop Road — a 27-mile scenic route that was developed in the 1930s under the supervision of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., who clearly had an eye for a view — and after roughly seven-tenths of a mile we arrived at Otter Cliff. And I will say this without a trace of irony: it was absolutely worth the journey.
Just before the cliff proper, there was a brief but lovely pause at Monument Cove, a small rocky beach framed by towering columns of granite that look as though someone with considerable ambition started building something and then wandered off. The cove has that particular quality of Maine coastline that makes you feel the world is very old and you are very small, which, depending on your disposition, is either humbling or mildly depressing.
Then the road swings left, and on the right-hand side there’s a small car park — the sort with portable facilities that remind you civilisation has its limits — and across the road a path leads you straight to the edge of Otter Cliff.
At 110 feet above sea level, Otter Cliff is one of the highest headlands on the entire North Atlantic seaboard of North America. The cliff face drops sheer into the ocean, pink and grey granite worn smooth in places and jagged in others, with the Atlantic frothing away at the base in a thoroughly committed manner. Rock climbers have been coming here since the early 20th century — it’s considered one of the finest sea-cliff climbing locations on the Eastern Seaboard, which says something about the quality of the rock and quite a lot about the fearlessness of climbers.
We stood at the top and looked out. On a clear day you can see for miles across the Gulf of Maine. The view is, not to put too fine a point on it, rather magnificent. Even for a 60-year-old Englishman who has seen a cliff or two in his time.
🏔️ South Bubble Mountain – Bubble Rock & Jordan Pond
We pulled off the Park Loop Road and parked up at Jordan Pond, ready to tackle one of the better-known trails in Acadia — up onto Bubble Mountain. Now, I use the word “tackle” loosely. This wasn’t exactly Everest.
Jordan Pond itself is one of those places that stops you in your tracks. It sat there looking almost absurdly perfect — crystal clear water, ringed by trees, with the two rounded humps of the Bubbles reflected in the surface to the north. The classic view, and the one that appears on what felt like every postcard, fridge magnet and tea towel in the gift shops of Bar Harbor, is taken from the south shore of the pond looking northward across the water at both peaks. On a calm day, the reflection is so sharp you genuinely can’t tell which way up the photograph should go. Very pretty. Sickeningly so, frankly.
The two peaks — South Bubble and North Bubble — are modest little mountains by any measure, rising to around 766 feet and 872 feet respectively, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re not worth the effort. They’re proper summits with proper views, and the trails to both are well-worn and well-loved. Acadia National Park, which was established back in 1919 making it one of the oldest national parks east of the Mississippi, has been drawing walkers, painters and assorted enthusiasts to these hills for well over a century. The Bubbles themselves were shaped during the last Ice Age — around 18,000 years ago — when glaciers ground their way across Mount Desert Island and left behind a landscape of smooth, rounded granite domes that look, if you squint a bit, rather like a pair of… well, the name rather gives it away.
The main event on South Bubble, aside from the view, is Bubble Rock — also known, with admirable lack of imagination, as Balanced Rock. And balanced it genuinely is. This is a large glacial erratic, a boulder that was picked up by the glacier somewhere to the north and carried along for the ride before being deposited, with what you can only assume was a degree of geological showmanship, right on the very edge of a cliff. It perches there looking as though someone has placed it as a joke, as if it might topple off at any moment. It hasn’t moved in approximately 18,000 years, but that does absolutely nothing to stop visitors grabbing a photograph that makes it look as though they’re personally preventing a catastrophe with one hand. We did the same, obviously. You have to, don’t you.
The hike up from the Bubbles car park is short and perfectly manageable — the sort of thing the Americans cheerfully describe as “family-friendly,” which in practice means that children were bounding past us on the way up while we paused, entirely deliberately, to admire the scenery. The path gains height reasonably quickly over granite slabs and through patches of forest, and before long you’re out on the open ridge with the wind in your face and a rather magnificent panorama unfolding around you. Jordan Pond gleams below, the Atlantic winks in the distance, and the rest of the park stretches out in every direction. Worth every wheeze, I can tell you.
One small note of common sense that the trail information mentions, and which I’ll pass on in the spirit of public service: if you’ve got young children with you, keep a close eye on them near the exposed sections near the top. The granite is beautiful but it’s also unforgiving, and the edges are real edges. Not the place for a moment’s inattention.
🏔️ Summit Road to Cadillac Mountain
We rounded off our first full day in Acadia National Park in the most sensible way possible — by driving to the top of a mountain. Not just any mountain, mind you, but Cadillac Mountain, and we did it via the Summit Road, which was officially opened to the public in 1931 and has been causing traffic jams ever since.
The road winds its way along the north and eastern flanks of the mountain for about three and a half miles — five and a half kilometres if you’re doing your A-levels — before delivering you, slightly breathless and considerably smugger than when you set off, to the summit. It meanders rather pleasantly, as roads of that era tended to do, because the engineers weren’t in any particular hurry and hadn’t yet discovered the joys of motorway-grade concrete. There are several small observation pullouts dotted along the route, and we stopped at most of them, because that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Now, a word about Cadillac Mountain itself, because it’s rather more impressive than it might initially sound. At 1,530 feet — 466 metres — it’s the highest point on the entire North Atlantic seaboard of the United States, which sounds like an estate agent’s description but is actually genuinely true. More usefully, it holds the peculiar distinction of being the very first place in the continental United States where the sun rises, and it holds this record from the 7th of October through to the 6th of March each year. After that, some headland in Maine takes over, and Cadillac has to wait patiently until autumn to reclaim its title. If you’re the sort of person who gets up before dawn to watch a sunrise — and we were, briefly, before better sense reasserted itself — this is your place.
The mountain is one of more than twenty peaks scattered across Mount Desert Island, Maine. They’re not some geological accident. These mountains were shoved upward over millions of years by the slow, relentless grinding of tectonic forces and volcanic activity deep beneath the earth’s crust, producing a landscape that looks dramatic precisely because it was traumatised at a geological scale. The glaciers finished the job nicely, scraping and polishing the pink granite into smooth domes and ridges. The result is the sort of scenery that makes Americans say “awesome” and makes the English say “oh, that’s rather good, isn’t it.”
The mountain’s name has a rather entertaining backstory. It was named after Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac — a Frenchman of considerable ambition and flexible relationship with the truth. Born in Gascony in 1658, he essentially invented a noble title for himself, turned up in the New World, and proceeded to make himself extremely important in the French colonial enterprise. He founded the settlement that became Detroit in 1701, which is either a claim to fame or something to feel guilty about, depending on your feelings about the modern automobile industry. The mountain received his name before the luxury car brand did — so he got there first, which is at least something. Whether he ever actually stood on the summit himself is, frankly, doubtful. But then most of us haven’t stood on Everest and we still know the name.
We took our time at the top, which felt richly deserved given the effort required to sit in a car for fifteen minutes.
Day Two
🌅 Sunrise on Cadillac Mountain
Before we get into this, let me just say that voluntarily getting out of a warm bed before dawn, in order to stand on top of a cold granite mountain with several hundred other equally deluded people, is not something I’d normally put on my list of life achievements. And yet, here we were.
Cadillac Mountain sits at 1,530 feet — the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States — rising out of Maine’s Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. The mountain was named after Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, a French explorer who received a land grant here in 1688, though he didn’t hang around long enough to do anything particularly useful with it. He did, however, later go on to found Detroit in 1701, which is either a great legacy or a questionable one, depending on how you feel about American cars.
The mountain’s peculiar claim to fame — and the reason several hundred otherwise sensible people drag themselves out of bed in the small hours — is that between early October and early March, it is the first place in the entire United States to receive the sunrise each morning. The Americans, being Americans, have turned this geographical quirk into something of a national event. People set their alarms, drive up the winding 3.5-mile summit road in the dark, and stand about in the cold clutching flasks of coffee, all so they can say they were first. First in the whole country. It is, when you think about it, completely mad. Naturally, we wanted to be part of it.
So we joined the throngs — and there genuinely were throngs — shuffling about on the bare, wind-scoured granite summit as the sky to the east began to shift from black to a deep, bruised purple. The crowd, a surprisingly international mix of visitors, went almost completely quiet as the horizon started to glow. Whatever you think about organised spectacles and tourist rituals, there was something genuinely moving about it. The sun came up over the Atlantic, blazing orange and gold, and for about forty-five seconds, nobody said a word. Then everyone started taking photographs on their phones, and the moment was, predictably, over.
Still. Worth it. Just about.
🏛️ The Abbe Museum
After our early start, we dragged ourselves back into Bar Harbor — which, frankly, was no hardship at all — and made a beeline for Jordan’s Restaurant, where we tucked into a thoroughly decent stack of pancakes. By the time we’d mopped up the last of the maple syrup, the town was properly waking up, and we ambled across to the Abbe Museum, which sits right in the heart of Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Street.
Now, I’ll be honest — I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Another dusty display case with a few arrowheads and a laminated information sheet? I’ve seen a few of those on this trip. But the Abbe turned out to be something genuinely special, and I left feeling rather glad we’d made the effort.
The museum is dedicated to the Wabanaki — the collective name for the Indigenous peoples of Maine — whose history in this region stretches back an extraordinary 12,000 years or more, long before anyone had thought to slap a gift shop on the waterfront. The Wabanaki Confederacy comprises five distinct nations: the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq and Abenaki, all of whom share deep cultural and linguistic roots and have called this corner of North America home since the last Ice Age retreated. They lived, hunted, and fished along these very coastlines, and regarded the land — including what is now Acadia National Park — as something to be respected and cared for rather than carved up and sold off. A concept that, as a species, we’ve not always been terribly good at grasping.
This is something that genuinely matters to me as we travel across the United States. It would be all too easy to barrel from one scenic viewpoint to the next without pausing to think about the people who were here first — who honoured and revered this land for thousands of years before my ancestors pitched up and, as Europeans so often did, made themselves thoroughly at home without necessarily being invited. So whenever there’s an opportunity to learn more, I try to take it.
The museum itself was founded back in 1928 by Dr. Robert Abbe, a New York surgeon with a keen interest in the archaeology of the region, and it originally opened as a small seasonal exhibit near Sieur de Monts Spring, tucked within what is now Acadia National Park. For decades it operated quietly in that original octagonal stone building — which still exists and is worth a visit in its own right — before a new, much larger facility opened in downtown Bar Harbor in 2001. Critically, the museum is now guided by a board that includes representatives from all four of Maine’s federally recognised Wabanaki nations, which means the stories told here are told properly — from the inside, not looking in through the window.
What the Abbe does particularly well is weave together oral traditions, personal testimony, cultural knowledge, and the Wabanaki languages themselves, alongside historical accounts, objects, and some rather impressive multimedia and digital interactive displays. It doesn’t feel like a museum that’s simply cataloguing a vanished people. It feels very much alive, because the Wabanaki are very much alive — still present, still active, and still fighting, with considerable dignity, for recognition and rights in the state of Maine.
In 2013, the Abbe became the first — and so far the only — Smithsonian Affiliate in the entire state of Maine, which is a rather significant distinction. The Smithsonian Affiliate programme links institutions across the country to the resources and collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and it’s not a badge handed out lightly. The Abbe earned it.
We came out rather more informed than we went in, which is generally the mark of a first-class museum. Highly recommended — and not just because the pancakes beforehand put us in an excellent mood.
🏖️ Bar Harbor
After the museum, we had a wander around Bar Harbor before lunch — and very pleasant it was too, even if my feet were already beginning to register a formal complaint.
Bar Harbor sits on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine, and in the 19th century it was the place to be seen if you were fabulously wealthy and needed somewhere to escape the sweltering heat of a New York or Boston summer. Think of it as the Hamptons of its day, only with more pine trees and slightly better manners.
The town really came into its own from the 1850s onwards, when artists from the Hudson River School — painters who had a particular fondness for dramatic coastal scenery — started arriving and putting the place on the map. The wealthy elite followed shortly afterwards, as they tend to do. By the 1880s and 1890s, Bar Harbor had become the undisputed summer playground of America’s most powerful families — the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Fords — all of whom built enormous summer “cottages” along what became known as Millionaires’ Row on West Street. I use the word “cottages” loosely, because these were vast, sprawling mansions with more rooms than most people have had hot dinners. The Vanderbilts, who apparently couldn’t so much as boil a kettle without doing it on a grand scale, were particularly well represented.
At its peak, Bar Harbor was home to the largest hotel in North America — the Rodick House, which by 1881 could accommodate around 600 guests and dominated the town like a particularly self-important cruise ship that had somehow ended up on dry land. The whole place hummed with wealth, ambition and the sound of people pretending not to show off.
Then came the night of 17th October 1947, and one of the most destructive wildfires in Maine’s history. Fuelled by an exceptionally dry autumn and fierce winds, the fire burned for nearly two weeks, destroying over 17,000 acres of Acadia National Park and wiping out a large number of those grand estates along the waterfront. More than 60 of Bar Harbor’s finest mansions were reduced to ash. The Rockefeller and Ford “cottages” — along with dozens of others — were simply gone. It was, by any measure, a catastrophic event, and it fundamentally changed the character of the town forever.
You can still stroll along West Street today and spot a handful of the survivors — handsome, shingled affairs that give you a decent sense of what the whole street must once have looked like in its gilded prime. It requires a certain amount of imagination, but that’s what you get for being born too late and too English.
We finished our wander in the most sensible way possible — by sitting down. We stopped at Geddy’s, a proper local bar and restaurant right in the heart of town, and had ourselves a very decent fish and chips. Not quite like back home, obviously. The chips were a different shape and the batter had its own ideas about what batter should be. But I wasn’t complaining. Well — not much
🏊 Echo Lake — Cold Water, Warm Memories
After a rather splendid lunch — and at our age, lunch really does need to be splendid to justify the subsequent waddle back to the car — we decided to head out to the western side of Mount Desert Island. The island itself, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, is the largest island off the coast of Maine and sits roughly halfway up the eastern seaboard of the United States. It’s about the size of a small English county, and rather prettier than most of them.
Our first stop was Echo Lake, a lovely little freshwater lake tucked just south of the village of Somesville, right alongside Route 102. Somesville, since you ask, is the oldest European settlement on Mount Desert Island, founded way back in the 1760s by Abraham Somes, who presumably had no trouble getting planning permission. It’s the sort of impossibly photogenic New England village that makes you feel slightly annoyed you didn’t grow up there.
Echo Lake itself sits in a glacially carved valley between Beech Mountain to the west and Acadia Mountain to the east — both of which are, by Lake District standards, more of a gentle suggestion of a hill than an actual mountain. The lake is about a mile long, quite deep for its size, and remarkably clear. It sits entirely within the boundaries of Acadia National Park, which was established in 1919 and remains the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River.
Echo Lake Beach occupies the southern shore and has, over the decades, established itself as the most popular freshwater swimming spot on the island. Entirely understandably — the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine is, to put it charitably, bracing. Echo Lake, being a small, relatively shallow lake, actually warms up to something approaching a civilised temperature by midsummer, which is more than can be said for the sea. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps — Roosevelt’s depression-era workforce — built a bathhouse and facilities at the beach, some of which still survive in rather characterful form today.
However, we were there in November, and the swimming situation was, shall we say, non-starter. The beach was deserted, the water was approximately the temperature of a GP’s hands in January, and anyone attempting a dip would have required immediate medical attention and possibly a stiff brandy. We stood at the water’s edge like two sensible people of a certain age, admired the reflections of the surrounding hillsides in the glassy water, and quietly congratulated ourselves on not being idiots about it.
It was, nonetheless, absolutely gorgeous — the kind of still, melancholy autumn beauty that you only really get in November, when the summer crowds have long gone home and the landscape has the good grace to look magnificent without asking anything of you.
🌲 The Wonderland Trail
We headed further along Highway 102 until we reached the Wonderland trailhead — and what a find it turned out to be.
The Wonderland Trail is a 1.5-mile round trip, and before you get too excited, I should point out that it isn’t quite as dramatic as the name suggests. There’s no white rabbit, no mad hatter, and absolutely no tea party. What there is, however, is a rather lovely old road — because that’s essentially what it is, a former carriage road dating back to the early twentieth century — that leads gently down through the forest to the ocean. And by gently, I mean genuinely flat. No scrambling, no twisted ankles, no roots conspiring to send you face-first into the undergrowth. After some of Acadia’s more demanding terrain, this felt almost suspiciously civilised.
The trail cuts through a dense, beautiful stand of spruce and fir, the kind of ancient-feeling woodland that makes you want to lower your voice without quite knowing why. This southwestern corner of Mount Desert Island has been part of Acadia National Park since the park’s early expansion in the 1930s, when philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. — who had already gifted some 11,000 acres to the park — helped ensure these quieter stretches of coastline were preserved rather than developed. We were rather glad he did.
As the trees thinned, the trail looped out towards the rocky shoreline, offering occasional access to the jagged, barnacle-crusted rocks that are so typical of the Maine coast. The rock here is mostly pink granite, formed around 380 million years ago and shaped by glaciers during the last Ice Age — which, to be fair, is rather more geological drama than most of us manage in a lifetime.
We arrived at the water’s edge just as the sun was going down, which was either very good timing or very poor planning, depending on how you look at it. The light turned everything a warm amber, and the Atlantic stretched out ahead of us looking magnificent and entirely indifferent to our presence. We stood there for a while, saying very little, which is not something that happens often.
All too soon, it was time to head back along Highway 102 to Bar Harbor and our hotel — and that, rather abruptly, was that. Two days in Acadia National Park. Two quite wonderful, slightly exhausting, unexpectedly moving days in one of America’s finest and, frankly, most underrated national parks.
We left feeling we’d barely scratched the surface. Which, of course, means we’ll just have to go back
Planning your trip to Acadia National Park
🏞️ About Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park is one of the crown jewels of the American East Coast, protecting the dramatic natural beauty of the highest rocky headlands along the Atlantic coastline of the United States. Situated on the rugged coast of Maine, the park draws around four million visitors each year, making it consistently one of the ten most-visited national parks in the entire country.
The park’s rich history stretches back to 1916, when over 5,000 acres of land on Mount Desert Island were donated to the federal government, initially proclaimed as Sieur de Monts National Monument. It was later elevated to full National Park status and briefly named Lafayette National Park, before finally being renamed Acadia in 1929 — a nod to the name given to the region by its earliest French explorers. Notably, Acadia holds the distinction of being the first national park established on the eastern seaboard of the United States, and the only one created entirely from donated land.
Today, the park encompasses three distinct units: the main body on Mount Desert Island (connected to the mainland by a bridge), the quieter Isle au Haut (accessible only by ferry or private boat), and the Schoodic Peninsula on the mainland. Visitors can explore 158 miles of hiking trails, 45 miles of historic carriage roads, and 27 miles of scenic motor roads winding through forests, over granite peaks, and along dramatic ocean coastlines.
📍 Location
Acadia National Park is located on the coast of Maine in the north-eastern United States. The primary visitor facilities are based at Mount Desert Island, near the town of Bar Harbor.
The main visitor address is:
Hulls Cove Visitor Centre 25 Visitor Center Road Bar Harbor, ME 04609 Maine, USA
By car from Boston, the most straightforward route is to take I-95 north to Augusta, then Route 3 east through Ellsworth and on to Mount Desert Island. Alternatively, continue on I-95 to Bangor, then take Route 1A east to Ellsworth, before heading south on Route 3 to the island. Flying visitors can arrive at Hancock County Airport, approximately ten miles from the park, which receives direct flights from Boston’s Logan Airport. The larger Bangor International Airport, served by national airlines, is roughly one hour’s drive away, with car hire available at both airports.
🌐 Website
The official park website, operated by the US National Park Service, is:
This site is the best source for up-to-date information on passes, reservations, trail conditions, campground availability, and seasonal closures.
📞 Contact Telephone Number
+1 (207) 288-3338
The main park line is staffed during regular business hours and can assist with general enquiries about facilities, access, and conditions.
For written enquiries, this address connects you directly with the Acadia National Park team. Please allow reasonable time for a response, particularly during the busy summer season.
🎟️ Entry Fees
A park entrance pass is required year-round at Acadia National Park, and all vehicles must display a valid pass clearly visible through the windscreen. The park does not accept cash — all payments must be made by card, either online in advance via Recreation.gov or at designated in-park locations.
Standard Entrance Passes (valid for seven days from date of purchase):
- Private vehicle — $35 (admits all occupants of a non-commercial vehicle)
- Motorcycle — $30 (admits the rider)
- Individual (on foot, bicycle, or similar) — $20 per person
Annual & Multi-Visit Passes:
- Acadia Annual Pass — $55 (unlimited visits to Acadia for 12 months)
- America the Beautiful Annual Pass — $80 (covers all US national parks and federal recreation sites for 12 months)
- America the Beautiful Senior Pass — $20 (lifetime access for US citizens or permanent residents aged 62 and over)
- America the Beautiful Access Pass — Free (lifetime access for individuals with a permanent disability)
Non-US Residents: International visitors aged 16 and over must pay an additional $100 per person fee on top of the standard entrance pass cost, unless they hold a valid Annual or America the Beautiful Pass.
Cadillac Summit Road Vehicle Reservation: From mid-May to late October, a separate reservation is required to drive Cadillac Summit Road. This costs $6 per vehicle and must be booked online in advance — it is not available for purchase at the park. This reservation provides timed entry to the summit but does not assign a specific parking space.
It is worth noting that 80% of all entrance fee revenue is retained by the park itself, funding trail maintenance, campground improvements, and the repair of historic buildings and carriage roads.
Passes can also be purchased in person at several third-party outlets near the park, including the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce on Cottage Street, the Jordan Pond Gift Shop, and chambers of commerce in Ellsworth, Mount Desert, and Southwest Harbor.
🕐 Opening Times & Seasons
Acadia National Park is open year-round, although access to many roads, facilities, and amenities is significantly reduced during the winter months.
Park Roads (2026 season):
- Park Loop Road and paved roads: open approximately 15 April – 1 December
- Unpaved roads: open approximately 15 May – 15 November
- Carriage roads: open year-round (with some seasonal closures)
- Schoodic Loop and Point Road: open year-round
Visitor Facilities (2026 season):
- Hulls Cove Visitor Centre: 2 May – 31 October
- Rockefeller Welcome Centre: 1 May – 27 October
- Sieur de Monts Nature Centre: 16 June – 14 October
- Carroll Homestead: 1 May – 31 October
- Park Loop Road Fee Station: open year-round
- Cadillac Mountain Vehicle Reservation Check Station: 20 May – 25 October
Campgrounds (2026 season):
- Blackwoods Campground: 1 May – 19 October
- Seawall Campground: 20 May – 12 October
- Schoodic Woods Campground: 20 May – 12 October
- Duck Harbor Campground (Isle au Haut): 24 May – 9 October
All campsite reservations must be made online in advance. There is no backcountry camping or overnight parking permitted within the park.
During winter, while formal visitor services are reduced, some areas of the park remain accessible. The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, located at the corner of Cottage and Main Street in Bar Harbor, provides visitor information and orientation services during the winter and spring seasons.
🥾 What to Do in the Park
Acadia offers an extraordinary range of outdoor activities for all fitness levels and interests. Hiking is the centrepiece of any visit — trails range from gentle woodland walks to the challenging Precipice Trail, which features iron rungs bolted into sheer cliff faces. The summit of Cadillac Mountain, at 1,530 feet, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States and is especially popular at dawn, as it is among the first places in the country to see the sunrise.
The 45 miles of historic carriage roads — built by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the early twentieth century — are a unique feature of the park, open to walkers, cyclists, and horse riders. These beautifully engineered gravel paths wind through forests and over elegant stone-arch bridges, offering a peaceful alternative to the motor roads.
Along the coastline, Thunder Hole is a narrow sea chasm where waves surge into a confined cavity, producing a dramatic thunderous boom and spray — particularly impressive around mid-tide during rough seas. Sand Beach, framed by pink granite headlands, is one of the very few sandy beaches along Maine’s rocky coast, though the water temperature is bracing even in summer.
Ranger-led programmes run throughout the visitor season, covering topics from geology and wildlife to the park’s cultural history. Most are free of charge. The free Island Explorer bus service connects major park destinations and the town of Bar Harbor, operating from late June to mid-October — a practical and environmentally friendly way to get around.
♿ Accessibility
Acadia National Park is committed to making its facilities, landscapes, programmes, and information accessible to visitors of all abilities. Many of the carriage roads are suitable for wheelchairs and adapted cycles. The Hulls Cove Visitor Centre and several key facilities have accessible amenities. Visitors with a permanent disability are eligible for the free America the Beautiful Access Pass, which covers the entrance fee
Best time to visit Acadia National Park
🌸 Spring (April – May)
Spring arrives gently at Acadia, coaxing wildflowers along the carriage roads and drawing migrating warblers and shorebirds to the island’s varied habitats. The park is quiet at this time of year, and you will often find the rocky shoreline at Thunder Hole or the summit of Cadillac Mountain entirely to yourself. Trails dry out gradually through May, though lower paths can remain muddy well into the season. Some facilities and seasonal concessions do not open until late May or early June, so it is worth checking ahead before you visit. Fog is common along the coast, lending the landscape an atmospheric, almost otherworldly quality.
What to pack: Waterproof hiking boots, layered thermals and a mid-layer fleece, a packable waterproof jacket, light gloves, a warm hat, trekking poles for slippery terrain, insect repellent, binoculars for birdwatching, and a reliable trail map.
☀️ Summer (June – August)
Summer is Acadia at its most alive — and its most crowded. Temperatures are pleasant, rarely oppressive, and the long days of the Maine summer allow for ambitious itineraries. The carriage roads are ideal for cycling, sea-kayaking tours run from Bar Harbour, and the sunrise over the Atlantic from Cadillac Mountain is one of the most celebrated views in the eastern United States. However, the park attracts over three million visitors annually and the peak crush falls squarely in July and August. Parking along the Park Loop Road fills by 9 a.m. on busy days, and the Island Explorer shuttle bus becomes essential. Accommodation should be booked months in advance.
What to pack: Breathable moisture-wicking clothing, sun cream (SPF 50+), a wide-brimmed sun hat, sunglasses, a reusable water bottle, a day pack, sandals or water shoes for shoreline exploring, a light rain layer, and a torch for early sunrise hikes.
🍂 Autumn (September – October)
Many experienced visitors consider autumn the finest time to explore Acadia. September retains much of summer’s warmth whilst the crowds thin noticeably, and by October the hillsides are ablaze with the golds, crimsons, and oranges of the northern hardwood forest. The air is crisp and ideal for strenuous hikes up the Precipice Trail or along the Beehive. Photography conditions are outstanding, with low-angled light and dramatic skies. Most facilities remain open through mid-October, though some boat tours and kayaking operations conclude by the end of September. Early booking is still advisable for accommodation in October, as the foliage draws its own wave of visitors.
What to pack: Medium-weight hiking layers, a warm fleece or down jacket for evenings, waterproofs, sturdy trail shoes, a beanie hat and gloves for cooler mornings, a camera or binoculars, and hand-warmers for Cadillac Mountain sunrise trips.
❄️ Winter (November – March)
Winter transforms Acadia into a landscape of stark, elemental beauty. The crowds evaporate entirely, the granite headlands are draped in frost, and the carriage roads become groomed cross-country ski trails. Jordan Pond may freeze, and fresh snowfall renders the park almost silent. This is a visit for those who relish solitude and dramatic scenery without distraction. The trade-offs are significant: the Hulls Cove Visitor Centre closes, most lodging in Bar Harbour shuts for the season, and icy conditions make many hiking trails genuinely hazardous. The park itself remains technically open, but visitors must be well-prepared and self-sufficient.
What to pack: Thermal base layers, insulated waterproof trousers, a heavy down or synthetic jacket, wool socks, crampons or microspikes, waterproof insulated boots, a balaclava, fleece gloves and an outer waterproof shell glove, hand and foot warmers, a thermos for hot drinks, and a headtorch.
🧭 Overall Best Time to Visit
For most visitors, September offers the most compelling combination of conditions at Acadia National Park. The summer heat has softened, the worst of the crowds have departed, the foliage is beginning to turn, and the full complement of facilities remains open. The hiking is excellent, the light is superb for photography, and accommodation — whilst still booking quickly — is more accessible than in the height of summer. Those who prioritise absolute solitude and don’t mind cold weather may find late October or even a mild winter weekend deeply rewarding. Equally, keen birdwatchers and wildflower enthusiasts will find May a hidden gem. But if one season must be named above all others, early autumn is Acadia at its most generous
Where to stay in Acadia National Park
1. Lindenwood Inn
Offering a seasonal outdoor pool, Lindenwood Inn is located in Southwest Harbor. Free WiFi access is available.
Each room here will provide you with a TV. Featuring a hairdryer, private bathroom also comes with bathrobes and free toiletries. Extras include a private pool, bed linen and ironing facilities.
At Lindenwood Inn you will find a seasonal hot tub, a garden and a terrace. The property offers free parking.
2. The Elmhurst Inn
3. Arcadia Bay Inn
Arcadia Bay Inn sits in Sullivan, Maine, a small coastal community on the quieter eastern shore of Frenchman Bay. The inn offers a straightforward base for exploring the surrounding Downeast region, with Acadia National Park a reasonable drive away and the working waterfront close at hand. Rooms are modestly furnished but comfortable, and the property suits travellers who want proximity to the coast without the bustle of Bar Harbor. Sullivan itself is the kind of place where you might spot seals from the shore or watch the lobster boats head out in the morning. The inn appeals to those after an unpretentious stay — walking the local trails, kayaking the bay, or simply taking in the wide views across the water. It is a sensible choice for independent travellers looking to slow down and get a genuine feel for rural coastal Maine
More to Explore
