Hiking Around Acadia National Park in the Summer

We arrived in Bar Harbor Maine on a Sunday afternoon. Bar Harbor is a town on Mount Desert Island and serves as a gateway to the mountains and cliffs of neighboring Acadia National Park. I had booked us a room at the Bar Harbor Grand Hotel which placed us right in the middle of town and provided free parking which would have been hard to come by this time of year.

Lulu Lobster Boat

We had a reservation for 2:30PM on the Lulu Lobster Boat. This is listed as one of the top tours in the area as it is the only lobster boat tour in Bar Harbor that is hosted on a traditional “downeast-style” lobster boat. After parking the car, we raced through town to the docks to learn that our two-hour tour was being reduced to one-hour because of the impending storm. We were okay with this as we have seals back home in California and didn’t need to see them here. (Also, Doug gets tends to get seasick on open water, and we weren’t looking to do that either.)

At 2:30PM we pushed off from the dock to begin to learn all about the life and work of the Maine lobstermen, understand how lobster traps are baited and retrieved, and be educated about some fascinating lobster trivia that we could use to enlighten our friends and family back home in California. Did you know that lobsters can regrow any body part that they lose except for an eyeball? That being said, other body parts (like a claw) can grow where the eyeball once was. Lobsters can pee up to seven feet away from their bodies. They also smell with their leg hairs!

Ocean Path Trail and Sand Beach

By 3:30PM we had returned to the dock preparing for a storm that never really manifested into anything substantial. We checked into our hotel and then decided to enter Acadia National Park and take the Ocean Path Trail. This 4.5 (out and back) trail starts at the south end of the Upper Sand Beach Parking Lot. It is an easy, mostly flat, trail that follows the coastline to Otter Point. About .5 miles from our car, Roy let us know that he now needed to use the restroom (that we had just all used 20 minutes earlier) and so our hike became .5 miles out, .5 miles back. After taking care of that, we hung out on Sand Beach for a little while admiring the view.

We still had an hour or so until sunset, so we stopped off at the Jordan’s Pond Path. This is another family friendly, easy trail around Jordan’s Pond. It is a 3.1 mile loop, but we were crunched for time, so just did a brief walk with the promise to return the next day.

Cadillac Mountain at Sunset

I had pre-purchased us a pass to drive the Cadillac Summit Road to Cadillac Mountain at sunset. These reservations can be made here. The road offers a three-mile drive to the highest peak in the park for the best view of the sunset. It is critical that you do this ahead of time as there is no other way to access the Mountain unless you decide to hike it.

If you are super ambitious, you could make a reservation to see the sunrise. It is, after all, the first place it does this in the United States. To do this you need to be up at 4AM though, and that just wasn’t our jam. I was concerned that the clouds would obscure the sunset, but they lifted twenty-minutes before sunset and so we were given an incredible view from the top. Doug honestly believed that he was witnessing a “double sun” which thoroughly confused the rest of us who, even at nine years old, realized it was just a reflection on the lake.

Beehive Loop Trail

We had big plans for our second day at Acadia National Park and the weather was cooperating. Bright blue skies and temperatures in the low to mid-70s. (Back home in Sacramento, we were getting reports that the temperatures we 110.) First on our list was to tackle the Beehive Loop Trail. The Beehive is an exposed, iron rung climb that is not recommended for small children. (Or people who are afraid of heights.) While both Roy and Greg do not love to hike, they do like to live dangerously, so “exposed” and “not recommended” were the only words they needed to hear and they were all in.

After 45-minutes we made it to the top of the Beehive Summit mostly unscathed. Okay, I did scrape my leg trying to pull myself up onto a rock and was actively bleeding at this point in time, but I’m a bleeder so it was kinda expected.

Ocean Path Trail Part Two

By the time we returned to our car, the park was very crowded. We decided to attempt the Ocean Path Trail once more, but first demanded that everyone use the restroom before we started. This was a beautiful hike, with many options for use to explore side paths down to rocky cliffs above the ocean. We also stopped at Thunder Hole, where waves crash into a small concave space at the end of an inlet making a loud, thunderous sound.

At the southern end of the path is Otter Cliff. This massive headland is one of the most recognizable geographical features in the entire park. We stopped and watched the lobster boats do their thing out at sea before heading back to Sand Beach and our car. We had lunch in the parking lot, and happened to sit next to a family that was from the same small town in California that we were from. I found this fascinating. This family was unimpressed.

Jordan’s Pond and South Bubble

Our final hike in the park was the Jordan Pond Loop to the South Bubble trailhead. Jordan’s Pond is a flat, mostly shaded trail so very easy. (Until your hat blows into the water and your parents have to wade in and retreive It.

Halfway around the “Pond” there is the option to take the trail up to South Bubble. This trail is a little over a mile (one way) and extremely “exposed” presenting the element of danger that our kids desire. On the way up we met several adults that were in tears and clinging to the side of the rocks. We made it to the summit without issue and then walked a short distance to a famous tourist attraction – Bubble Rock (or Balanced Rock). Bubble Rock is a large boulder that was carried by glaciers and deposited at the seemingly precarious edge of a cliff. 

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

After a short break at our hotel, we drove back into the park to see the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. This lighthouse was constructed in 1858 and is one of three lighthouses managed by Acadia National Park. It has appeared on the “America the Beautiful” quarter in 2012, and the NPS centennial postage stamp in 2016. We were not the only ones visiting it at sunset. Crowds aside, we squeezed in a few pictures then headed back to Bar Harbor for Thai Food and blueberry ice cream.

Our next stop was New Hampshire.