When talking to friends and family about my plans for May and the next step toward achieving my New Year’s resolution, I encountered the same question in almost every conversation: “Why do you want to go to Maine?”
It’s a fair question. There are plenty of magnificent parks and trails within driving distance of Nashville, and I’ve only explored a few of them. Further away from home, places like Montana and Colorado attract hikers from all over the world, and I regret to admit that I’ve only ever seen the Rocky Mountains from an airplane. Many esteemed hiking destinations in this region are more accessible and less expensive to visit than the remote northeastern coastline of Maine.
So, why visit Acadia National Park? I think the most attractive thing about traveling to Maine was the fact that so few people in my immediate circle of family, friends, and coworkers have ever been there. The place carried this alluring mystery in my mind, and I wanted to explore it for myself, alongside my significant other and favorite hiking partner, Andy.
Although I don’t personally know many people who have visited Acadia, the park receives plenty of tourist traffic, especially during the summer months. As the only national park in the northeastern United States, I can understand why. Acadia National Park exists in its entirety on Mount Desert Island, which is also home to the charming town of Bar Harbor, Maine. Yes, it’s a big island. In addition to its expansive woodlands and pristine lakes, Acadia’s terrain is rugged and mountainous, but there’s also a gorgeous beach and a rocky coastline that extends for miles and miles. For those seeking a civilized alternative to the Acadian wilderness (or a lobster roll), Bar Harbor is nothing short of delightful.
As first-time visitors to Acadia National Park (and the state of Maine), Andy and I spent our first day exploring a couple of the most popular hiking trails, Beehive Loop Trail and Ocean Path. Both trailheads are accessible from the Sand Beach parking area. If visiting the park on a weekend day during the peak summer season, plan to get there early, or you may miss out on hiking the trails in the area due to limited parking space. We arrived around 8:30 AM on a Saturday and were lucky to find one of the last remaining spots.
Beehive Loop Trail
There’s no shortage of amazing trails at Acadia, but the one that generated the most excitement for me prior to our visit was the Beehive Loop Trail. For a relatively short hike (about a mile and a half), this one packs in all kinds of fun.
The upward ascent begins at the trailhead and doesn’t stop until you’re standing on top of the mountain. Beehive Mountain rises about 600 feet above sea level, and the total distance from the trailhead to the summit is only half a mile. This is definitely the most challenging stretch of the trail, considering the significant elevation gain over a short distance, plus the climbing required to reach the top. In my opinion, the climbing portion wasn’t physically demanding, but with many narrow ledges hundreds of feet above the forest floor, I’ll admit that the exposure felt daunting at times.
I tried to channel the adrenaline pumping through my veins into excited energy, not paralyzing fear, and leveraged the iron rungs drilled into the rock face as often as they were available. All of the mixed emotions and mental anxiety transformed into an overwhelming sense of calm and accomplishment after I reached the top of the mountain, which is spacious and flat enough to enjoy without much risk of falling over the edge.
The climbing section is intended to provide one way access to the top, and two-way traffic on this trail would be seriously difficult (and dangerous) because the trail simply isn’t wide enough to allow it. The path downward isn’t nearly as steep and winds through rocky open spaces with expansive views before descending into the lush forest below. This part of the trail offers an easy, pleasant journey, and we encountered many hikers who opted to take this route both up and down the mountain. As is usually the case though, the more challenging route is much more satisfying.
Ocean Path
After we’d returned to the Beehive Loop trailhead, we decided to check out Sand Beach and make our way down the Ocean Path from there. By the way, I’m convinced that the same middle-aged white man with a mid-level government job named both the beach and this trail without ever seeing either one, because each space is much more stunning and inspiring than those lackluster names suggest.
As the name implies, Ocean Path runs along Acadia’s eastern shoreline overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a flat and relatively wide trail with little elevation gain and many access points from the park’s main road. This trail runs about two and a half miles (one way) and ends just past Otter Cliff. Along the trail, there are dozens of short spurs that lead out onto the cliffs for a closer and more extensive view of the ocean. As an easy hike with incredible views, this trail stays crowded. However, with so many quick opportunities to venture out onto the cliffs, it isn’t difficult to find a spot away from the crowd to relax and enjoy an unobstructed view of the limitless beauty that Acadia has to offer.
We noticed that the trail became gradually less crowded as we moved further away from Sand Beach. With this in mind, if I could do it over again, I’d have started at Otter Cliff and hiked in the other direction, toward Sand Beach. The cliffs are higher around Otter Cliff, providing more expansive views, and because the crowds are smaller, it’s an all around win. If you start at Otter Cliff, there’s no need to hike all the way to Sand Beach, since the beach is easily accessible from a parking lot off Park Loop Road.
Penobscot Mountain and Sargent Mountain
This hike. It’s currently the front runner for my favorite hikes of 2018 so far, and we ended up here by accident. I’ve already mentioned the limited parking at the more popular trailheads. Candidly, this hike is so far off the beaten path that it wasn’t really on our radar until we’d had two failed attempts to park anywhere remotely close to trails we’d intended to explore. Even with this one, we had to park on the side of the road about a mile away from the trailhead, and I’m so very grateful for all of it.
Fortunately, many trails originate from the starting point of the Penobscot Mountain trail. All of the alternative trails are easier to hike, so despite the overcrowded parking lot, the Penobscot Mountain tail receives relatively low traffic. Like the Beehive Loop Trail, this one involves some entry-level climbing, but it all happens early in the hike, below the tree line. After that, the trail climbs steadily past a couple of dazzling overlook points, which offer stunning views of Jordan Pond and Cadillac Mountain, the tallest mountain at Acadia National Park (AND the first place in the United States that sees the sunrise each morning).
After the trail climbs above the tree line, small rock arrangements called cairns mark the path forward. These man-made rock formations have been used since prehistoric times to designate scared places and help travelers navigate through their natural surroundings. Although they can be found all over the world and vary wildly in age and significance, I’d never encountered any used as trail markers before and thought this was a brilliant alternative to the bright paint that’s generally used to mark trails when the path becomes hard to distinguish.
Our reward for reaching the summit of Penobscot Mountain: unparalleled 360 degree views of Acadia and Mount Desert Island. I can’t put into words exactly how incredible this view really is. I’d never been to the summit of a mountain that overlooked both land and sea, and there’s something especially powerful about experiencing this on an island, because you can see both in nearly every direction.
The one thing that obstructs the combined land and sea views to the north: Sargent Mountain, which stands about 200 feet taller than Penobscot Mountain. Sargent Mountain claims the title of second highest mountain in Acadia National Park, and we didn’t even know it existed until we reached the top of Penobscot Mountain. The trail that connects these two summits runs just over a mile, one way, so the decision to continue on to the top of Sargent was an immediate one.
After a brief descent below the tree line between the two mountains, we started the steep climb toward the peak of Sargent Mountain, guided once again by the cairns. As we approached the summit, we quickly realized that the views from the top of Sargent, though similar to those from neighboring Penobscot Mountain, would extend much further due to the extra elevation. It sounds obvious, but thinking it and seeing it are totally different things.
Have I mentioned that we ended up on this trail after several failed attempts to hike others that we thought would be “better”? I know I have, and I’m here to admit that we were wrong. I can’t imagine a more breathtaking hiking experience at Acadia, and none of the other trails that we considered would have brought us up as high as this one did (with the exception of Cadillac Mountain, but you can actually drive to the summit of this mountain, which made the idea of hiking to the top less appealing).
In short, our entire trip to Acadia National Park affirmed my belief in taking the road less traveled. From the moment we decided to make Acadia our destination, instead of a more popular park out west, to accidentally discovering these captivating trails that most park visitors overlook, it really did make all the difference.
