Day Twenty-Four – Acadia National Park

Sitting just off shore from Ellsworth, Maine, is Mount Desert Island on which the Acadia National Park is located. This island is also where the famous Bar Harbour is located. Acadia is known for being one of the busiest national parks. In part, this is due to its proximity to the large east coast population.

Although we visited mid-week in mid-September, it was definitely a busy area.  After crossing onto the large island, we first headed for Bar Harbor on the northwest corner. Yikes! It was a crazy busy tourist area, not the nice little port we had expected. The narrow streets of the town were lined with cars, restaurants, and touristy shops. People were strolling along the busy sidewalks. There was definitely no parking for a pickup and once on the main road through town, we couldn’t get off... Okay, scratch the plan of exploring the port.

On to Acadia National Park. There was an entrance to the park road that follows the perimeter of the park just outside of Bar Harbor, so we turned onto it. A right turn brought us to a road sign – Right to Acadia Park Road – Left to Bar Harbor. That was where we had just escaped from... so we turned right onto the one-way traffic park road. About 50’ around a tree lined corner there was a “Low Bridge – 12’ 2” ” sign. WHAT! There had been no prior indication that there would be low bridges in this park. Our camper is at least 12 feet tall, we were confident that it was less than 12’ 6”... Frantically, I dropped the air out of the airbags that cushion the suspension to give us a few more inches of clearance. Since it was a one-way road, Pat just creeped the truck under the low bridge while we both listened for a scraping sound.

Whew, made it!

A quick Google search returned the fact that there were several more low bridges in Acadia – one was 10’ 4” and another 11’ 8”. What to do? A map showed us there was a park entrance booth a short distance ahead, so we went there for advice on how to escape a one-way road with super low bridges?

The Park Ranger gave us a map that showed which upcoming stops we would be fine with and where to exit before coming to the lower bridges. That was a relief. We asked why there weren’t low bridge signs before turning onto the one-way road? He just shrugged and said we could thank the Roosevelt era construction standards.

Oh well, we were able to go to a few stops on the northwest portion of Acadia. Once I got over the heart-pounding thought of the top of the camper getting scraped off, it really was a beautiful area with giant rock slabs lining the shore.

We spent quite awhile on a sandy beach and watched the waves crashing onto the shore. Small in comparison to the breakers on the west coast, still these pounded the beach, much to the delight of tourists.

Once out of the national park, we continued driving around Mount Desert Island. Each bay held numerous boats, both small and large, moored offshore. It made for a picturesque drive. 

The rocky northern Maine coastline was beautiful with it’s giant slabs of rock on this peaceful day, but we imagine that during storms there would be waves crashing along the shore. 


All in all, our experience on Mount Desert Island was mixed. While we were disappointed that we couldn’t stop in Bar Harbor, the scenery of the island was gorgeous. We enjoyed the day exploring the other parts of the island that had hidden treasures like this secluded lighthouse. 

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