We traveled with older parents and a 1 yr old right before Labor Day weekend during Covid Delta surge. When we scheduled the trip, Covid numbers were way down so we felt like we could comfortably travel. Bar Harbor is a lovely coastal town, but the true gem here is Acadia. We set out one morning to split off activities on the "Ocean trail" some would walk with the baby in stroller, and the others would bike. It was very busy and took a while to find parking at the Sand Beach parking lot, around 12:30, but we got lucky eventually when somebody left the upper lot. There is no clear paved nor gravel path from this lot. Your choice is to go down a very steep rocky hill side to the lower lot (Not an option for a 75 year old with osteoporosis) Nor an option for a baby in a stroller, so we had to walk down the upper parking lot into the main road and back down to the lower lot where the trail starts or you can go down the stairs to the beach (again not great if you have a stroller) We had ordered a really fancy child hiking carrier online with ample time to be delivered for our trip but it still didn't arrive in time for our trip departure. This would have been the better option, it's not stroller friendly.
It was very hard to find anything that resembled a biking trail. We could not find any ranger or staff to inquire and there was no bike trail marked on the map down below at lower parking lot. So my father and I were off to explore and figured we'd just bike till we found it. Boy were we wrong, after about a half hour, asking other confused park guests, we finally found a paved trail, but it was so hilly and congested with people, we decided to skip the bike ride after all and meet up with the other half of our group on Sand Beach. The water is frigid, even after it's had all summer to warm up, it was still too cold to enjoy a swim comfortably, so was just basked in the warm sun and enjoyed the scenery instead. Next time we will better research the biking trails and stroller friendly trails, but the trails out of Sand Beach are NOT the ones sadly. We later drove through the park to go back to the town and thoroughly enjoyed the park. There are spectacular views and we even saw two dear by the road who tolerated us taking some photos while they grazed.
Відповідь від хоста
Sep 2021
Thanks for this detailed review! We’re sorry you had difficulty locating the bike trails, but we hope you and your party enjoyed Acadia’s beautiful scenery anyway! If you’re interested in trying out more tours of national parks (and plenty more), check out our website: ActionTourGuide.com.