Bar Harbor, Maine

Sand Beach - Acadia NP
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Our first stop in Maine was Portland. A little out of the way as our main destination was Bar Harbor, but I assured Scott that I had read good things about it. Well, let’s just say that in the end, Portland wasn’t our favorite. I’m sure it had plenty to do with the fact that it took us over an hour to find accommodation and much of that problem had to do with the fact that there were no signs off of the interstate that we were on and the funny part was that we ended up right where we began as we came into the city, it just wasn’t visible and there weren’t good signs. We got over it and found a great dinner spot for some comfort brew and burgers at the Lost Bear. Highly recommended. We spent the following morning along the harbor and the old part of town and found it a little more fun, but not fun enough to spend another night. We moved on to Bar Harbor.

View from Cadillac Mountain to the bay
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Bar Harbor (or Baaaa Haaaa Ba in local speak) was a nice change from our first impressions of Maine. Love it here! It’s all about 1) lobster and 2) Acadia National Park. It’s located on Mount Desert Island along the coast and much of the land is part of Acadia National Park. Included in that land is over 50 miles of carriage roads that (thankfully) John D. Rockefeller donated so that the island wouldn’t eventually be overrun with car traffic. These gravel roads wind through the park and only allow walkers, bikers and horses/carriages. We rented bikes and hit the carriage paths on our second day. Great fun and a bit of a challenge too with the hills. We also spent a day hiking. We hiked up Cadillac Mountain for great views all around the island. This mountain is the tallest point on the Atlantic seaboard north of Brazil and it’s only just over 1500 feet high. The island also has a number of glacier formed lakes and ponds.

Got Lobster?

Bass Harbor
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Oooohhh, and then there is the lobster! We hit two great lobster pounds on the west side of the island and had some great lobster (Thurstons was our favorite). Not to mention that one whole boiled lobster here costs less than the lobster roll we had in Massachusetts.

The final favorite was the Maine blueberries. We found a great breakfast spot (Café this Way) where the blueberry pancakes were fantastic and we had to hit the local microbrewery (Atlantic Brewing Company) which also brews a special seasonal blueberry ale – very sublte but very tasty. Yes, we know, yet another microbrewery. Scott’s pretty proud of his beer belly at this point of the trip. Nancy thinks we both know enough about the process now to start homebrewing. Maybe someday when we live off the land. Oh….and the brewery here has a mean BBQ spot attached and serves a mean pulled pork sandwich!

Southwest Harbor
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Can’t wait to get back there some day in the future. Next on to Quebec City, CA!

Tidbit of the day: Acadia National Park was the first designated national park east of the Mississippi and Mount Desert Island has the only fjord in the contiguous United States (Somes Sound).