Adventures in Acadia National Park
It’s the most wonderful time of the year - Autumn! It’s no secret that this is my favorite season for many reasons but one of which being how beautiful it is outside. Growing up in New England, I’ve always been privileged to some of the most amazing fall foliage. There is nothing better than being comfty cozy in your favorite hoodie, with a PSL in hand, walking amongst the yellow, orange and red colors.
This year has obviously been a weird one, one where we literally haven’t been able to leave our houses for half of - nevermind getting on a plane. Since travel has been limited, and our international travel plans were postponed, we decided to take advantage of this time to explore our local area instead. As an MA native, I’ve been to Maine more than a few times in my life, but never during the fall. So, we packed our bags and made the drive up to Acadia National Park for a 4-days and 3 nights!
Read on to learn how we made the most of our limited time!
Day 1
We arrived in Maine around 5pm, leaving just under 2 hours to fit some outdoor activities in before it got dark. We stayed at the Otter Creek Inn, which put us within walking distance to the Park Loop - a huge relief since we had our very energetic puppy with us!
After checking out some of the trails near our inn, we ordered take-out from Blaze in Bar Harbor. Blaze has amazing wood grilled chicken wings and we ordered a spicy bbq chicken pizza that we’ll probably be dreaming of for weeks. We tucked in early our first night so that we would be well rested for our first full day of hiking!
Day 2
Our main purpose of visiting Acadia National Park was to see fall foliage, and there’s no better viewpoint for this than above the trees! So, we grabbed some blueberry cobbler flavored coffee fuel at Black Fly Coffee and picked up some sandwiches for lunch from Downeast Deli and made our way to the Bubbles Divide.
Most people are interested in the Bubbles trail area for the South Bubbles trail, which offers one of the most famous views in Acadia. But, when we were doing some of our research, a lot of people were commenting that this trail is not great for dogs. So, we opted for the North Bubbles Trail which leads to an amazing view over Eagles Lake. I HIGHLY recommend taking this route if you’re interested in a longer hike. However, while this trail is dog friendly and our dog was completely capable of completing the trail - there are a ton of boulders that you’re walking on and climbing up so it might be more difficult for smaller or non-athletic dogs.
We found a helpful trail map on CitrusMilo.com. We went from the Bubbles Divide parking lot down the Jordan Pond Carry trail which links up with the Eagle Lake Trail and loops up to Conners Nubble and the North Bubbles Trail.
After a few hours of hiking, we decided on take-out again, this time from The Lobster Co in Bar Harbor because no visit to Maine would be complete without a lobster roll. Of course, we each got one roll but we also ordered the fried pickles which were unexpectedly some of the best fried pickles I’ve ever had, if not the best. Again, we went to bed early because we had reservations to watch the sunrise at Cadillac Mountain the next morning, which meant an extremely early wake up call!
Day 3
With a 5:15am alarm clock, we got ourselves together enough to get to Cadillac Mountain in time for the sunrise. Cadillac Mountain is one of the first spots that the sun rises in North America, so it’s a huge attraction in Acadia. They are currently testing a vehicle registration process so we had to book a spot in advance which meant we were guaranteed a parking spot BUT also meant we had to go on a specific day which worked against us because it was extremely foggy. So foggy that we did not see a single speckle of sun peek through.
Since we had such an early day, we obviously needed more coffee. We went back to Black Fly Coffee because it was SO good. I’m serious - their blueberry cobbler iced coffee kept me going.
There was a big threat of rain starting in the afternoon, so we wasted no time and got ourselves over to the coastal side of the park. We also needed to make a vehicle registration for this, but we were able to do it on our drive over since there were way more spots available. We parked at the Sand Beach and decided to walk to the ocean path all the way until the Otters Cliff overlook.
We still had some time before the rain hit, so we went into Bar Harbor to do a little shopping (did you even go to Maine if you didn’t buy maple syrup and some kind of blueberry related product?), and had a late lunch break at the Bar Harbor Beerworks because they were dog friendly and we love beer! For the record, I tried the blueberry beer from Atlantic Brewing Co. and it was delicious.
Of course, the rain eventually came so we went back to the room to take a nap before ordering take-out (again, because COVID) from Side Street Cafe. And because “when in Rome” we ordered more lobster rolls which were an easy 10/10 on my lobster roll rating scale and came with some pretty damn good clam chowder too. We also added on a slice of blueberry pie which was absolutely delicious.
Day 4
On our final day in Acadia, we wanted to fit in one last hike. We knew the pup was tired so we didn’t want to do anything too extreme and we also wanted to leave at a reasonable time because we had a long 5+ hour drive ahead of us. We decided to try the Gorham Mountain Trail because it was short (2 miles, RT) and offered amazing views of the fall foliage and ocean. This trailhead is in the coastal area that requires vehicle registration, so again we booked a spot on our way there and there was plenty of availability.
After our quick hike at Gorham Mountain, we got on the road back home. Just outside of Portland, ME we stopped at a dog-friendly brewery called Island Dog Brewery where we each tried a flight of some delicious craft beer (they had their own blueberry beer which was hands down THE best blueberry beer I’ve ever had) and ordered pizza from the nearby Otto’s pizza.
And that marked the end of our short trip to Maine. As always, there was plenty of things we could. have done that we didn’t get to. There are plenty of other trails that we can’t wait to get back to one day, and some areas that would be better explored in a post-covid world.