ACADIA (2020)
One of the shining gems of the east coast was calling our names for a second time in the summer of 2020. After having a multitude of travel plans fall through because of the pandemic, we were able to arrange a trip to New England. Because most of the states we were visiting at the time were in the “green” and because our home state of New Jersey had low enough case numbers, we were okay to travel to these states without needing to quarantine (trust us, we did a lot of research and planning to make sure it was all okay).
After spending a gorgeous swath of days in both the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, we made our way further north to the rocky coastline of Mt. Desert Island, where Acadia is located. Actually, our first stop wasn’t the island itself, but a piece of the mainland that was gifted to the park at a later date, the Schoodic Peninsula. This small, but often overlooked section of the park (unless perhaps you mountain bike) was a mossy wooden wonderland we wouldn’t have traded for the world. We got to spend a late afternoon, early evening traipsing through these woods living our full David the Gnome fantasies come to life.
On our second day of this three day trip, we headed back to Mt. Desert Island to explore some of the trails in the eastern portion that we hadn’t seen before on our first trip. While we had certainly seen a great deal in 2018, there was much yet to see in the eastern section of the park and so we kicked off our journey on the familiar territory of the Beehive. From here we hiked around the Bowl, up and down Champlain Mountain (mistakes were made), along the rocky Beachcroft Trail, down around the Tarn, up the Cannon Brook Trail, down the Cadillac South Ridge Trail, down around Eagles Crag, along the Quarry Trail, to the Otter Cover Trail, before eventually making our way to Ocean Path which would lead us back to the car at Sand Beach. It was a long but glorious day.
The last of our journey took us to the western portion of Mt. Desert Island to two hikes around Long Pond. The first took us to the left and up and around Bernard Mountain, while the second took us to the right, up and around Beech Mountain. Each of these sets of trails and mountains had their own special qualities and things that made them interesting and are such great areas to hike, especially if you are trying to avoid more of the potentially crowded eastern trails.
We can’t recommend visiting Acadia enough and can’t wait to get back again. Enjoy these photos that catalog our journey on this second trip. To see images from our first trip to Acadia in 2018 and the trails and sites that were apart of our journey, click here.
Acadia National Park is on the traditional and stolen land of the Wabanaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Abenaki people.
Listen while you look! This buttons will link you to the podcast episode for this park and gallery.
