Getting Around Acadia National Park

     After visiting Provincetown (and Boston . . . I'll post about that another time), we headed toward Maine to one of the destinations that excited us most while planning our trip.



     If you check out the map, you can see that Acadia is located on Mt. Desert Island, yet is still pretty easy to get to. These are the locations we visited during our two days in the park:

     View the full map here. 

     While you're driving in and throughout Acadia, you often drive in and out of National Park Service lands. Make sure you go get the park pass at the visitor center or Park Loop Road entrance to avoid getting in trouble! 

     Anyway, most of the main attractions in Acadia are located on the eastern part of the island. Most of these spots are located on a one-way Park Loop Road. This is slightly inconvenient, but there are some other ways to navigate using non-park roads or riding the free Island Explorer shuttle. The shuttle system is pretty easy to use, with shuttles coming through frequently during summer.

     We did take the shuttle to travel from Blackwoods Campground to The Beehive/Sand Beach and Jordan Pond on the second day we were there. It was fairly easy to figure out what shuttle to take, though we certainly needed to check our shuttle map to double check. There are eight different shuttle routes, (though one is not on Mt. Desert Island) so there is the possibility of getting on the wrong one. 

     I was less than impressed that the orange Loop Road shuttle shuts down by 6pm. A primary stop on that route is the Visitor Center which closes, but without that route it's hard to get to your destination in the evening. Plan accordingly when using the shuttle or you may find that you are crunched for time or that you will waste more time waiting for a different shuttle.

     Here's the link for the shuttle map and schedules.

     I'm finding that I have too much to say about Acadia, so I will make this into a couple different posts in order to not write one so long that no one wants to read it! My Acadia video will be out soon as well.