The Quiet Side of Acadia National Park

You can find more stories like this in our Good Life and Top 1% sections.

It's no wonder the Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Vanderbilts and Pulitzers flocked to Maine's Mount Desert Island. Home to the spectacular Acadia National Park, which those early-20th-century "rusticators" helped create, MDI boasts dramatic cliffs and towering pines where the mountains meet the sea.

Inside the park, you can scamper across rocky mountain ridges on 125 miles of well-marked hiking trails, taking in stunning vistas in every direction. Or imagine yourself a rusticator by exploring the bike- and horse-friendly carriage roads built by the Rockefellers.

The town of Bar Harbor, which sits surrounded by the park, is one of the Northeast's top tourist destinations. Formerly called Eden, it's a great little town with something for everyone: hotels for most every budget, shopping, dining, museums and other educational institutions -- plus helpful folks, small businesses and outfitters who stand willing to guide tourists on whatever adventure they seek. That's why, when you're headed to Acadia, it can seem as if everyone is in Bar Harbor. (You might even run into area homeowner Martha Stewart.)

If you'd rather avoid the crowds, consider this: Mount Desert (pronounced like what you eat after dinner, despite the spelling) Island is more than just Bar Harbor. The island is split down the middle by seven-mile-long Somes Sound, the East's only fjord. The town of Mount Desert, on the eastern side of the sound, and the towns and villages on the western side have just about everything Bar Harbor does -- except for the tourist traps and the people who flock there.

« Previous Page

1 2 3 4

Next Page »