New Hampshire has many small towns, somewhat widely separated — and the trip from Twin Mountain to Bar Harbor, ME took us through a similar landscape although not mountainous! There’s definitely not a direct route to Bar Harbor so we enjoyed a very idyllic landscape of farms, lakes, rivers and..finally: the coast!
Bar Harbor/Acadia National Park: Zoe had been here many years earlier and wanted to share what is known as “one of the most visited US National Parks” — hopefully, without the crowds!
We realized that might not quite be the case as we were having a really tough time finding an RV park — especially because of Covid as many hotels weren’t open.
We ended up in Winter Harbor — which is actually a parallel peninsula to Bar Harbor in an absolutely gorgeous RV park called Main Stay Cotages & RV Park. Right on the water with a view of all the islands and..next to the ferry dock that would take us over to Bar Harbor!
Winter Harbor actually has a subset of Acadia National Park and we had a great time exploring — almost to ourselves (you’ll see why this was so nice, later!).
Food Shoutout: The Bakery on Main St., Winter Harbor Located in an older house right on Main, this is one terrific bakery — especially considering Covid. Everyone is served from a single window at what was probably the front porch previously. Great tasting maple scones, blueberry pie, focaccia bread..you name it! And, it’s in walking distance from the RV park! (Good to get the exercise!).
Finally, Acadia National Park: See above: Winter Harbor is a separate penninsula and Bar Harbor is crowded!
The good news: we took the local ferry over to Bar Harbor — runs about 3 times/day after Labor Day and it’s possible to take bikes (which we thought was a great idea but turned out not to be). Ferry was great; one of the staff provided great stories about lobstering, local history, etc. — and she took us to the Acadia Bus Stop so we could do a “hop on/hop off” tour of Acadia National Park.
And, it was crowded! Summers have to be absolutely crazy. We were able to visit most of the “have to see” spots. Debbie Gale had advised a must do: popovers at Jordan Pond but it was something like an hour wait to make an in-person reservation — which was 2-3 hours in the future.
Somewhat disappointed in this part of the adventure, we took a 4pm ferry back to relaxing Winter Harbor and said, “Maybe we’ll come back”