A Fall Getaway to Acadia National Park
Hi Mamas! I hope you’re enjoying the gorgeous fall weather we’ve been having over the past couple of weeks. I know I certainly have been trying to make the most of it! I can’t believe the 70-degree days we’ve had these past couple of days in early October. It’s something I don’t recall experiencing before. We’re headed to the lake this afternoon to enjoy it while we can.
I wanted to share with you all our camping trip itinerary to Acadia National Park from last weekend. We had an absolutely incredible time, and I highly recommend taking a trip to Acadia if you have the opportunity to. It’s a bit of a drive for us, so we usually try to go up early Thursday afternoons and come back sometime on Sundays whenever we go to Acadia. Do whatever works best for you and your family!
Thursday – The Long Drive and a Rainy Arrival
This trip, we drove up on Thursday afternoon, but it was raining the entire way. Not only raining, but there were several hours of torrential downpour that we had to drive through, and my tires were in pretty bad shape (my car was scheduled for new tires the Monday after we returned, which did us no good for the drive to Acadia). So what should have been a five-and-a-half-hour drive turned into a seven-hour drive. The other couple we went camping with this trip actually ended up getting a hotel for the night about an hour from Acadia because they didn’t want to set up in the rain. Which, let’s be honest, no one wants to set up in the rain. It's not fun. By the end of it, you’re soaked, the tent is usually damp, and any kids or dogs with you are upset because they’re still in the car waiting to get out after a long drive.
My husband and I had discussed getting a hotel for the night, but in the end, we decided that since we’d made the drive, we would just stick it out. So we got up to the Blackwoods Campground in Otter Creek around 9:30 pm and headed to our campsite. Service in this area is always questionable, so I’d recommend printing out your camp reservations, Acadia park pass, and any other confirmations you have before the trip. If you get in late, you can go directly to your campsite and check in the following morning, which is what we did. Fortunately, when we arrived, there was a lull in the downpour, so we were able to get set up in light rain rather than a downpour. And we brought our easy-up, which gave us a nice 10x10 area to stay dry under when we weren’t in the tent. We recently upsized to this tent and love it. It’s huge! My husband is 6’3”, and he can stand up in the center of it. Plus, it comes with a (albeit flimsy) sheet that can be hung to create two separate spaces within the tent. We have a full-sized mattress and sleeping system, a pack-n-play, luggage, and lots and lots of space left over. We can easily fit our dog and her dog bed in the tent as well on trips when we bring her. Acadia is one of the few places we camp that we don’t bring our dog, though. Although it is fairly dog-friendly, there are many hiking trails that do not allow dogs, and we don’t like to limit ourselves when hiking in Acadia, so our dog usually stays with my parents.
A few things to note about the Blackwoods Campground: it is dog-friendly, which is nice. The campsites are all a decent size, and you can put two tents on a single campsite, but they only allow one car per campsite. They have an overflow lot where any additional cars can park within walking distance, and they do allow the additional cars to temporarily park when loading and unloading gear, firewood, etc. There are no showers at this campsite. There is a shower house less than a two-minute drive from Blackwoods Campground, and whoever owns it definitely does well for himself. In order to even start the shower, you have to put in seven quarters ($1.75). Each $0.25 gets you 15 seconds of shower time. There is a timer that goes off when you have one minute of shower time left, at which point you can add more quarters. The showers are hot-water showers, which is nice, but the timer stressed me out. Plus, I was shocked that 25 cents only bought me 15 seconds of shower time! It’s $5 for a five-minute shower there. There are also bathrooms and a counter with lighting for you to do your nighttime moisturizer or morning makeup routine if you enjoy doing that while camping. There are also two machines in the shower house where you can exchange dollar bills for quarters, so if you don’t have quarters, don’t worry, just bring cash. There is also an ATM machine in the bathhouse, but both times we’ve been here, the ATM machine was broken, so I do recommend bringing cash with you. Blackwoods is part of the bus system that services Bar Harbor as well, so if you don’t want to drive into Bar Harbor and battle for parking, this is a convenient way to get into town!
Friday – Hiking Around Jordan Pond and Learning to Go with the Flow
Now that we have a toddler, our camp mornings are a bit slower than they used to be. Our daughter loves the tent and is getting better about sleeping in her pack-n-play when we camp. I also keep a sleeping pad for her next to me just in case she wakes up in the middle of the night, as she does occasionally when camping. If you want to see what I recommend for hiking gear, check out my blog post here and follow my Hiking + Camping Amazon list here. I’m always updating my hiking and camping gear recommendations on my Amazon list.
Our friends met up with us at the campsite around 10 am, and after we got them all set up, we packed our lunches and headed out to go for a hike. Now, this was a Friday during prime leaf-peeping season, and we were arriving at 12:30 pm in the park. The trailhead we were looking for recommended that we park near the Jordan Pond Restaurant. Since 2020, parking in National Parks has gotten a lot worse. People are crazy. When we visited Glacier National Park in 2023, we witnessed an actual fistfight over a parking spot on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. We did not have that same situation in Acadia, but we did have to loop around and follow signs to the Jordan Pond Overflow parking, which turned out to be parking along the road within the actual park. In Acadia, most roads are one-way, two-lane roads, and the right lane can be used for parking (again, in most areas of the park, this is the case, but not always, so make sure to follow the road signs). We ended up having to walk for almost a mile from our parking spot to get to the trailhead!
I usually love AllTrails for finding new hiking trails, but there are times when it does steer me wrong. This was one of those times. We selected a trail that was a little less than four miles long, depending on the route down we took. We hiked probably a quarter of a mile before coming out to a carriage road and were looking up at the narrow, rocky path that zigzagged along the rock face. We were debating whether we should try it with a baby carrier when two different hiking groups came by. Both were made up of locals, and they all recommended we not take the trail we were originally planning on because it was very steep, hard, and they considered it dangerous with a baby carrier. Originally, we were going to hike Spring Trail to Penobscot Mountain Trail and then take Deer Brook Trail down and go back along Jordan Pond. But it was at the carriage road before the upper section of Spring Trail that it was recommended we not take it. It was also recommended that we definitely not do the Jordan Cliffs Trail, which connects at the top of Spring Trail, as an option. AllTrails reviews of this loop did mention that there was some bouldering, but I didn’t see comments saying it wasn’t child-friendly (there were even reviews with kids ages 7 and 9 who did this trail). Ultimately, we decided to alter our route and hike along the carriage trail to pick up the Penobscot Mountain Trail a ways down and avoid the steep rock scramble of the Spring Trail. This added at least a half mile to our hike, but the views at the top were absolutely gorgeous! We had lunch and let our daughter play while we enjoyed the views.
We took Penobscot East Trail down to Jordan Cliffs Trail to Deer Brook Trail before walking back beside Jordan Pond. Penobscot East Trail also had some bouldering that we were not anticipating. At one point, we took the carrier off and passed the carrier with my daughter in it down. Fortunately, we were with another couple; otherwise, this would have been much more stressful for me. As it was, I decided to just enjoy it and go with the flow. I just kept thinking, “We would be the couple that plays hot potato with our baby going down a mountain.” It ended up being a great day, even though we had so many unplanned changes throughout the day.
That’s something that I’m continually working on - just going with the flow. I can only control what I can control, and sometimes things need to change. Whether those changes are safety-related, weather-related, or someone physically can’t make the climb, it’s important that you’re flexible and willing to make those changes. It’s when you don’t that you can get into trouble. We were safe this whole hike because we were flexible with our plans. And I just embraced the changes because I wanted to enjoy the trip and teach my daughter that it’s okay for plans to change.
Sometimes, you may not be hiking with a group of friends when you come across a portion of a trail that is unsafe for you and your baby. If you’re hiking alone or only with your spouse and the trail requires at least another one or two adults to make it safe for your baby, don’t be afraid to ask other hikers for help. And don’t be afraid to turn around and go back the way you came if there are no other hikers around. Just because you didn’t finish the trail doesn’t mean you failed. Just getting outdoors with your littles means you’re doing a great job, Mama! You don’t have to do it all alone. There are many times when I’ve hiked just with my daughter and my dog and have had to ask for help getting up a spot from a passing hiker. I’ve never had someone ignore my ask or say no. People, despite how crazy our world is now, often will help those in need on the trails. So don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it!
Once we got back to the campsite, we all decided to hit the shower house and light our money on fire for those short, expensive showers, but it was so worth it after that unexpectedly long hike. Then we started on dinner. My husband and I love to do “hobo dinners” when we camp. I’ll link to my recipe for these, because they are so yummy, and you can change the recipe to fit your family’s palate as needed. The one downside of hobo dinner is that it does take a long time to cook since you’re cooking it over the campfire (really on the coals next to the fire). Since there was so much rain on Thursday, the majority of the available campfire wood to purchase was soaked, so we had a very hard time getting a fire going. We ended up turning our hobo dinner into a hobo stew and cooked it on the camp stove, and that was just as delicious as if we had cooked it over the fire.
Saturday – Biking the Carriage Trails and Exploring Bar Harbor
On Saturday, we drove to Bar Harbor to pick up our bikes that we rented. If you have a chance to go to Acadia, I’d highly recommend spending a day riding the carriage trails on bikes. We chose to rent e-bikes because we were worried about being wiped out from having to tow our daughter in a trailer all day. We did a full day and thoroughly enjoyed it. This was our favorite day! The e-bikes made the carriage trails a breeze, and we got to see so much of the park! We had made a lunch reservation the night before at the Jordan Pond House Restaurant and got there with a few minutes to spare. Lunch was delicious, and I’d highly recommend stopping for the tea and popovers. But you should definitely make reservations ahead of time! We tried going to dinner there the night before, after our hike, and they were fully booked. Fortunately, they did let me make a reservation for the following day.
We rented our e-bikes through Coastal Kayaking Tours out of Bar Harbor, and they provided us with a map on how to bike to Acadia, as well as which carriage trails were intermediate versus hard. Since we rented e-bikes, we could not take the bus to Acadia. Regular bikes can be taken on the bus if you prefer to take the bus instead of biking back to the park. No bikes are allowed in your car, though. The trip back to Acadia was well marked both on the map and with street signs. It’s a very common thing to do, so Bar Harbor has definitely accommodated bikers well.
Riding the carriage trails was just so much fun! The carriage trails are well-maintained and so beautiful. Next time, I want to do the more challenging trails since we stayed on the intermediate trails this trip. The couple we went with rented from a different outfitter and chose to rent regular bikes instead of e-bikes. They had a harder time with the trails as a result. If you’re a strong biker, you can bring your own bike, but we loved the ease and accessibility the e-bikes provided us. Our daughter loved riding in the trailer; she would shriek periodically when my husband would pick up speed and loved riding in the trailer.
We returned the bikes around 4:00 pm (they had to be back by 5 pm) and then grabbed ice cream at Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium (get the chocolate-covered strawberries for later - they were so good!) and went and sat down on the hill to watch the harbor. My daughter was up and exploring the green and the docks along the harbor as soon as she was done with her ice cream. Before we left, we shared those chocolate-covered strawberries, and watching my daughter try one for the first time may have been my favorite part of our trip. She was absolutely adorable, trying to bite into the strawberry, and was so excited once she got her first real taste of it.
Sunday - Farewell to Acadia
We hit Acadia just right this trip. Despite the harrowing drive up in the rain, it’s one of our top three camping trips we’ve done. The leaves were changing and close to peak, if not peak, in many places throughout the park. The air was comfortable, cool, and crisp with a nice warm sun. And it was like this the whole weekend we were up there! So if you have the chance to visit Acadia, I’d recommend going. We are planning on going back annually because we enjoy it so much up there!
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