On our first full day in Acadia, We woke up at 5 am for sunrise at Egg Rock Overlook. There were only a few people there, it’s more popular to see the sunrise at Cadillac Mountian. Acadia is one of the first places in the United States to see sunrise each day. It was a great way to start the day and we had one more stop before breakfast and coffee for my mom.
At 7 am we got into Bar Harbor to start the Bar Island hike. At low tide, a land bridge connects to the island. There isn’t much to the island but it has amazing views of Bar Harbor.
Breakfast was well deserved after that.
Next, we planned on biking the carriage roads near Jordan Pond. The parking lot was full but luckily the park shuttle has a bike rack, so we parked at the visitor center and took the shuttle back to Jordan Pond. The carriage roads were constructed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a motor-free way to enjoy nature on horse and carriage. They are now also used by horseback riders and bikes but I’d rent an e-bike if you want to do this. The roads were much more mountainous than we were expecting. We tried for about a mile but gave up, it was miserable so why waste the rest of the day? After a picnic lunch at Jordan Pond, we went back to the shuttle stop.
Before the shuttle arrived we saw this baby porcupine that looked sickly.
On the shuttle we regrouped and I consulted the guidebook, it’s by a local James Kaiser and I’d highly recommend it. I picked a hike on the center-west side of the island near our campground.
The parking lot to Beech Mountain felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. The signage wasn’t clear but the path looked right. It wasn’t as long as I was expecting but had beautiful views on these cliffs overlooking Somes Sound. It was fun trying to look for our campsite across the sound.
On the way back to the car we talked about how short the Beech Mountain trail was and this nice man stopped us asking if we wanted to go to Beech Mountain. We apparently had just hiked Beech Cliff, Beech Mountain is 3 times as long. We were parked facing the Beech Mountain trailhead but had turned around because the Beech Cliff trailhead was more visible through the trees. It was getting late but we thought we’d have enough daylight.
This was our first Mountain hike of the trip and it was nothing like I expected. It started in the woods and turned into root-covered rocks.
There was even some rock scrambling.
The top was breathtaking and although the fire tower was closed, we could climb up a flight of stairs for even better views. We couldn’t stay too long because the sun would be setting soon.
The way back had cliff views of Long Pond that were so beautiful we lost most of the daylight stopping for pictures.
The last fourth of the trail was in the woods, we had to hurry back before it was too dark in the tall trees. This was our longest day in Acadia and I wouldn’t change any of it.