Day 142 - Acadia National Park, ME

We were really looking forward to visiting Acadia National Park. So many people before our trip and during told us how beautiful it is, especially in fall. Maybe we had our expectations too high or maybe we were just unlucky with the weather but we were not blown away as we were expecting to be.

All National Parks are different but Acadia felt a little too different to the parks we were used to. Rather than it being a big block of protected land, it incorporates land that sits between villages, towns, farms and private property. It was difficult to work out what was park land at times and this led to us accidentally finding ourselves going down private roads and peoples driveways rather than park roads.

The coastline was rugged and beautiful but it didn’t feel as raw and natural compared to what we saw in Oregon and Washington. The mountain provided stunning views as we watched the sunrise but it was a struggle to find a parking space so we ended up seeing it separately and we didn’t manage to make it to the lighthouse we mentioned in this video as we just couldn't find a parking space. The traffic and parking must be a huge problem during the peak season which I expect is why there are so many different bus services taking tourists to the different areas of the park. Had we had more time, we probably would have taken the bus we just didn't want to be tied into a timetable when we were under pressure to see as much as we could in a day. Plus it doesn't start until 9am and we'd already seen a lot of the park by then thanks to our early morning start!

We were surprised at how busy the park was given it is was Tuesday and the season has now ended but after a trip to Bar Harbour to buy some tarp we realised why. This town was heaving with tourists, it felt like the height of summer. Looking out to sea we could see a huge cruise ship was docked just outside the harbour ferrying its thousands of passengers to and fro on little boats. I felt like there were too many people for this little town to cope with and couldn’t wait to get back to our campsite.

Back at camp, whilst Lee wrestled with the tarp, I built the fire and cooked dinner: sausages and cowboy beans, a camping favourite! We had seen on the weather forecast that it was due to rain this evening, we ended up just finishing dinner at 5pm as the rain started to fall. Lee's little tarp kept us dry until we were ready to head inside to bed.

The campsite was a really nice campsite for a National Park. The sites were large with good tree cover, the grill, fire pits and picnic benches were in good condition and the toilets were flushing. The only negatives were the cold water to wash your hands in the toilets and the lack of the soap and hand driers / towels but were used it to now and always carry plenty of hand sanitiser and wipes.

We were expecting Acadia to be cold, the coldest location we were planning to visit. It turned out to be chilly but to be as cold as either Sequoia or Yellowstone. What did surprise us was how early it got dark. By 7pm, the campsite was pitch black but at least Acadia is one of the first places in the US to see the sunrise so maybe shifting our day to an early start was a good idea.