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The Best Things to See and Do in Acadia National Park (2022)

Many people picture the west when they think about national parks in the USA, but the East Coast has some real gems too. One of these is Acadia National Park in Maine, located at the northeastern tip of the United States.

At 46,000 acres, Acadia is not even close to being the biggest national park in the United States. However, it’s one of the most popular. That’s no surprise. It boasts many stunning vistas, from mountains and forests to the sea and ponds. The northeast is also one of the most densely populated sections of the country, so plenty of visitors live within a stone’s throw of the park. You’ll have company on your trip, especially if you visit during any season outside of winter.

Read on for some of the key things to learn before starting an adventure in Acadia National Park, including the 5 best easy hikes in the area.

Map of Acadia National Park

Here are the official maps of Acadia National Park from the National Park Service. You may find it helpful to look at this to get oriented and make sense of the itinerary and directions below.

Note that Acadia is divided into three parts. The largest of these is Mount Desert (which the locals pronounce like “dessert”) Island. It covers around two-thirds of the park’s total area. The smaller parts are the Schoodic Peninsula to the east and the Isle au Haut to the south.

If you have five days or fewer at Acadia, I’d advise you to spend the bulk of your time in Mount Desert Island, with a day trip out to the Schoodic Peninsula.  

A Great 5-Day Itinerary for Acadia National Park

Overview of the Itinerary

Here’s a short overview of the itinerary right up front, concentrating on Mount Desert Island and the neighboring Schoodic Peninsula. The easiest way to do this is with your own car, but if you don’t have one, the Island Explorer shuttle is also available during the summer and early fall. We’ll explore this in-depth below.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Make your vehicle reservation to drive up Cadillac Summit Road to Cadillac Mountain before your arrival or early on during your trip, two days before your intended visit.

Day 1: Buy your ticket and get oriented at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center. See the Wild Gardens of Acadia and Sand Beach. Drive the Park Loop. Walk over the Land Bridge to Bar Island at low tide.

Day 2: Set out early for Sand Beach to get a good parking spot. Hike Ocean Path from Sand Beach to Thunder Hole to Otter Point. Then hike Gorham Trail back to Sand Beach.

Day 3: Drive out to the Schoodic Peninsula. See Ravens Nest. Hike the Schoodic Head Loop and visit the Schoodic Institute. Watch your footing at Schoodic Point.

Day 4: Visit Cadillac Mountain before sunrise or right after. Hike the Cadillac Summit Trail. See the ships at the pier by Asticou Terraces, then drive up to the Thuya Gardens and trails.

Day 5: Drive out to Jordan Pond early. Hike the trail encircling Jordan Pond. See Bass Harbor Lighthouse. Visit Asticou Azalea Garden. Take a last stroll around Bar Harbor, visit Ellsworth Library, and get a milkshake at Morton’s Moo.

5 Best Easy Hikes in Acadia

And here are the 5 best easy hikes you can do during your stay. How did I choose the “best”? Each of these includes scenic views, is under 5 miles long roundtrip, and does not require any special hiking gear.

• Beachcroft Path – A 2.4-mile roundtrip trail that takes you to Huguenot Head on one side of Champlain Mountain. You’ll enjoy great views of Frenchman Bay and the environs.
• Gorham Mountain Trail – This 1.8-mile roundtrip trail takes you to the summit of Gorham Mountain and along Cadillac Cliffs. You’ll see the Beehive, Champlain Mountain, Egg Rock Light, and Sand Beach.
• Jordan Pond Shore Path – A 3.1-mile trail that takes you around Jordan Pond.
• Ocean Path – This 4.4-mile roundtrip trail along the coast will show you Monument Cove, Otter Cliffs, Sand Beach, and Thunder Hole.
• Schoodic Head Loop – Located on the Schoodic Peninsula, this 2.6 mile roundtrip loop of three trails showcases broad views of the bay, forest, and Mount Desert Island.

Now let’s take a look at each of these days and places in greater detail.

Day 1: Hulls Cove Visitor Center, Wild Gardens of Acadia, and Bar Island

Stop in the Bar Harbor area for a nice breakfast at Jordan’s Breakfast. The eggs, toast, sausage, and Wild Maine Blueberry muffin are delicious. Be aware that the restaurant can get crowded as early as 8:00 am.

Try to arrive at the Acadia National Park Hulls Cove Visitor Center by 8:30 am. It’s a worthwhile first stop. Consider buying a CD audio guide to the park and other souvenirs here. In this area you’ll find some nice overlook points from which to see islands, cliffs, and the sea.

Begin driving the 27-mile Park Loop Road, loaded with some of the park’s best sights.

Drive to the Wild Gardens of Acadia and take a couple of short hikes. Sand Beach is a highlight, with dramatic vistas of craggy rocks, trees, and the ocean, and of course a rare “sandy” beach. It’s the only one of its kind in the park. The “sand” here consists mostly of ground-up shells from mussels and other sea creatures.

Continue driving the Park Loop Road. Outside of winter, the roads here can get really crowded, almost like a parking lot. By midday, spaces at premium places like Sand Beach are few and far between.

Keep an eye on the tides by looking at posted signs in the park or an app. Plan your schedule around the tides and return to Bar Harbor in time for low tide. You should be able to find a spot within half a mile of the Bar Island Path for around $5 for three hours.

Ordinarily, Bar Island is a landmass in the distance, separated from the mainland by the sea. But for about an hour and a half on either end of low tide, a land bridge emerges like magic from the water and connects Bar Island to the mainland of Mount Desert Island.

At that point, you can cross the bridge. You’ll probably see lots of rocks, seashells, sand, and the occasional crab and seagull. Every year people or cars get stranded on the island or bridge. If you get stuck on Bar Island when the tide comes in, your only recourse is to take a water taxi back for a couple hundred bucks or wait 10 hours for the next low tide and run across then.

As one local guide put it recently: “Every year—and it’s happened already this year—someone who doesn’t know how tides work drives their car out onto the sandbar during low tide because they can’t find parking in town. Then they go have dinner and by the time they return to their car, it’s been swept away by the high tide. Then they get their 15 minutes of fame because they’re on the front page of our local newspaper.”

Spend a while studying the trees and mysterious stone ruins on Bar Island while hiking its trails, then go back. Walk around downtown and sample some of the local cuisine. You can buy a lobster roll with slaw and chips for around $30.

For dinner, consider a delightful and reasonably priced pulled pork sandwich with fries or another BBQ or seafood meal at Acadia Lobster and BBQ.

Day 2: Ocean Path, Sand Beach, Thunder Hole

Drive out to Sand Beach and get one of the good parking spaces in the main lot if you can so you don’t have to park on the side of the road out in the boonies.

Hike the Ocean Path from Sand Beach to Thunder Hole to Otter Point. From there, hike up the rocky Gorham Trail and back to Sand Beach. By noon the Ocean Path Trail can get extremely crowded.

Sometimes Thunder Hole can offer a tremendous spectacle of water crashing against the rocks. During my last visit, it was something of a letdown though. I visited a little more than two hours before high tide and waited for about 45 minutes, but never saw more than the occasional splash—no giant cascade and clap of thunder. There were wonderful views of the coast elsewhere on the trail though.

Day 3: The Schoodic Peninsula

Enjoy an early morning breakfast at Martha’s Diner. One delicious and filling dish is a blueberry pancake, scrambled eggs and ham, home fries, toast and coffee for under $20.

Then make your way to Schoodic Peninsula, wonderfully devoid of tourist crowds but with many of the natural wonders of Mount Desert Island. Start off with a quick stop at Frazer Point and walk out onto a bridge over water.

Then see one of the area’s highlights: Ravens Nest. Park in the unmarked area off to the left of the road and walk down a dirt path to find three incredible viewpoints. The first overlooks sheer cliffs with an island in the distance. The second looks out over an inlet with interesting sheer cliffs, a few cavernous openings, and is framed by evergreen trees. The last shows a long stretch of rocky coastline.

Before 9 a.m., try to park in one of the spots at Blueberry Hill. This small lot will be much in demand later in the morning. From here, walk several trails on the Schoodic Head Loop: the Anvil, Schoodic Head, and Alder trails.

You might consider the East Trail as well, but not that it is poorly marked over rough, steep terrain. You may need to double back on that one if you’re not on experienced hiker. You’ll probably see some delicate thuridium, pretty blue green tendrils of some kind of moss that grows in large clumps.

That afternoon, visit the Schoodic Institute, which used to be a Navy base starting in 1935. It’s been responsible primarily for studying climate change since 2002. Here one of the friendly rangers can give you tips on sightseeing on the peninsula, such as how to see the Sundew Trail and explore the appearing and disappearing Little Moose Island, connected to the mainland by a bridge at low tide.

While at the institute, you can play around with ship triangulation in the museum and walk the pleasant Sundew Trail, which has three nice turnoffs and views of water and forest.

Then visit Schoodic Point, with views of the sea from pink and black granite slabs. Watch your step and be extra careful to ensure your shoes have good traction. The rocks are slippery and this area has seen some bad accidents.  

Day 4: Cadillac Mountain

For many, driving up to Cadillac Mountain to watch the sunrise is a highlight. It’s not always easy to arrange though, especially when the park is crowded. Typically you’ll need to reserve a spot two days beforehand at around 10 a.m., and all the slots get snatched up in moments. On my last trip to Acadia, I tried several times to reserve Cadillac Mountain sunrise tickets using the reservation system on the Recreation.gov app, but it didn’t work (possibly because of poor cell coverage where I was in the park when I tried using the app).

If you’re not able to snag one of these few pre-sunrise slots, don’t fret. In some ways, it’s even better to catch the first time slot after sunrise at around 8 a.m. because there won’t be much of a crowd or traffic at that point. Plus, you’ll get to sleep in.

The morning of your visit, be sure you have the code from your reservation. At the entrance, show your Cadillac Mountain reservation code to a ranger and drive up. Your ears might pop from the elevation change. There are several good turnoff overlook points up and down the road to the summit.

Walk the Cadillac Summit Trail and look at the lava flows and distinctive pink granite. You may see a ranger and researcher from Schoodic Institute keeping an eye out for hawks.

Later that morning, stop by the Asticou Terraces in northeast harbor to admire the ships at the pier. Then drive up to the magnificent Thuya Gardens. Here you can walk several good trails: Eliot, Asticou Ridge, Jordan Pond-Asticou, Harbor Brook, and Richard. Each of these is loaded with exotic flora, like mosses and odd mushrooms.

Day 5: Jordan Pond, Asticou Garden, Bar Harbor, Ellsworth Library

Enjoy a tasty breakfast at Jordan’s Restaurant. You might try coffee and Wild Maine Blueberry Pancakes with Real Maine Maple Syrup.

Then hurry over to the Jordan Pond pathway parking, ideally before 0730. After three days of trying, this was the only time when I was able to get a spot. Use the basic bathroom on site.

Then spend a wonderful couple of hours walking the 3.2-mile circumference of Jordan “Pond.” It’s hard to claim it’s a pond, and is probably more of a lake because it’s huge and you definitely cannot not see its floor. If you’re here in the fall, the views of green, red, gold, and orange trees framing the water, whipped up by gusts of wind, can be amazing. The trail covers gravel, boardwalks, bridges, and boulders.

In the northeast section, consider climbing the difficult Bubbles Divide Trail if you’re in excellent shape. It crosses rough rocky terrain to a nearly vertical cliff face with extremely narrow passages. You can always quit halfway to the top and go back (which is exactly what I did).

By 9:45 a.m. the parking lot will be full, with several cars circling aggressively to take your spot. It’s a 40-minute drive to the southwest harbor to see the Bass Harbor Head Light lighthouse, which operated starting in 1858. The rocks from which to view it, overlooking the sea, are treacherous. Be careful while ascending and descending.

By noon, try to visit the remarkable Asticou Azalea Garden, with a spectacular view of red, gold, and green trees from across a pond. Then depart for a last tour of Bar Harbor.

Take another look at the Bar Island path if the tide is high. It will be completely submerged at high tide. You might even see kayakers paddling across the area where you walked earlier this week.

For a nice New England snack, try a warm popover with maple butter and blueberry jam from Stadium. Then walk around the quaint streets and shops. Get a souvenir or two, like blueberry taffy or postcards.

Wrap up the day with a visit to the historic late 19th century Ellsworth Library. It has a remarkable historic gun used at Lexington and Bunker Hill in 1775 and the War of 1812 before it was donated to this library in 1899.

Then visit Morton’s Moo for a homemade milk shake like the Bow Chikka Wow Cow, with chocolate ice cream, dulce de leche, caramel, and whipped cream.

Best Time To Visit Acadia and Weather

Acadia National Park is a year-round destination, but the accessibility, crowds, and weather will vary considerably depending on the season.

Spring alternates between cold and pleasant weather, with the possibility of lingering snow. Partway through the spring, roads, facilities, and services will become easier to access.  

Summer offers pleasant weather and long days. Roads, facilities, and services are widely available. Crowds are at their peak during the summer.

Fall provides incredible fall foliage sightseeing opportunities, usually peaking at around mid-October.

During winter, the crowds are gone and parking is much easier to find. However, many services are suspended.

How Much Does It Cost?

As of July 2022, a vehicle with up to 15 passengers can enter the park for seven days for $30.

One person on foot or on a bike can enter for seven days for $15.

You can buy a 12-month Acadia National Park Pass, good for you and others in a non-commercial vehicle, for $55.

A 12-month America the Beautiful Pass (aka Interagency Annual Pass) will admit you for 12 months from the date of your purchase for $80.

If you’re a U.S. resident age 62 or older, you can buy a 12-month Senior Pass for $20 or a Lifetime Senior Pass for $80.

Nearest Airports and Distance to Major Cities

The closest major airports to Acadia National Park are Boston’s Logan Airport (about 274 miles away) and Bangor International Airport (about 46 miles away).

Acadia is located about 482 miles from New York City. It’s around 280 miles between Boston and Acadia. The distance to Acadia from Portland is 160 miles.

Where to Stay and Eat Near Acadia

Hotels and Motels

Bar Harbor offers many lodging possibilities in or close to the entrance to Acadia National Park.  Rooms get taken fast, so don’t delay if you’re planning a trip to Acadia. Book your reservations as soon as you know your dates, at least several months in advance if possible. Here are a few reasonably priced options that are popular among visitors.

• Acadia Inn 98 Eden St, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, Phone: (207) 288-3500

• Best Western Acadia Park Inn, 452 ME-3, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, Phone: (207) 288-5823

• Acadia Gateway Motel, 329 Bar Harbor Road, Trenton, ME 04605, Phone: (207) 664-9483

Also consider the Acadia National Park Airbnb options in the area. Many apartments, cabins, and cottages are available if you make reservations far in advance.

Alternatively, you might stay on the Schoodic Peninsula. You’ll have less company and more driving if you’ll be spending a lot of time visiting the main sights on Mount Desert Island.

Camping

If you’d prefer to go camping, you have several options in the park. Each offers at least some cell phone coverage. Be sure to study the sites and reservation rules at the links below.

On the western side of Mount Desert Island, there’s Seawall Campground. It’s about 18 miles from Bar Harbor. Here you’ll find around 280 reservable spaces.

On the eastern side of Mount Desert Island, there’s Blackwoods Campground. It has around 160 camp sites.

Further east on the Schoodic Peninsula, there’s Schoodic Woods Campground. This is a good choice if you want to be further away from the crowds. It has about 90 camp sites.

Much further afield on the Isle au Haut is Duck Harbor Campground. It’s on a small island accessible by boat from Stonington, Maine. Only 5 camp sites are available.

What To Bring Hiking

Here are a few suggested items to bring along on your day hikes around Acadia National Park.

• Guidebook and trail map
• Water and snacks
• Smartphone with Google maps
• Compass
• First aid kit, including moist towlettes
• Hiking shoes with good traction
• Hat or cap
• Sunscreen and lip balm
• Insect repellent
• Island Explorer bus schedule (if you’re not using your own car to get around the park)

Plants and Animals In and Around Acadia

The Wild Gardens of Acadia is a great place to find plantlife. Here you’ll see everything from carnivorous plants like the Pitcher Plant to Spatulate-leaved Sundew Drosera Intermedia. White paint lichens and old man’s beard are other notable plants. Throughout Acadia National Park are spruce-fir, aspen, beech, birch, maple, and oak trees.

Asticou Azalea Gardens show brilliant colors from azaleas, shrubs, spring ephemerals, spring heath, and flowering trees during the spring. In the summer you can see summer azaleas like smokebush, Japanese irises, and waterlilies.

At Thuya Gardens, you’ll find many woodland plants and mosses native to the area.

Acadia National Park is a great place for bird watching. Here you can find Atlantic puffins, loons, eider ducks, eagles, ospreys, and black guillemots.

At the water’s edge, you’ll see barnacles, dog whelks (snails), sea urchins, and sea stars.

In forested and pond areas, squirrels and woodpeckers are common. Various frogs and toads, raccoons, beavers, and turtles abound.

Look out to sea during your stay and you might see harbor porpoises, harbor seals, or whales.

Recommended Resources

Here are some good reference materials for your trip to Acadia National Park.

• Acadia National Park brochure (available at the visitor center) – features maps and visitor info
• Acadia National Park Moon Guide by Hilary Nangle
• Acadia National Park Hiking and Biking Trail Map (by Map Adventures Maps & Guides) – features carriage roads, hiking trails, and mileage between points

Other National Parks

If you’re looking for other national parks to explore, check out our guides to Big Bend National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park.