She Booked the Flights Anyway

I didn’t want to go to Maine.

My wife had been pushing it for two years. I figured it was tourist lighthouses and overpriced lobster in a parking lot. I’d done the Caribbean. I’d done Europe. Maine sounded like a downgrade.

She booked the flights anyway.

Five days later I was sitting on a dock in Bar Harbor at sunrise. Fog rolling off the water. Lobster boats heading out. A blueberry muffin the size of my fist. And I said out loud, to nobody: “She was right.”

Here’s how I’d do it again. Five days. Portland to Acadia. The best trip I almost didn’t take.

Most people fly straight to Bar Harbor and miss the best part of the state. Portland is where you want to land.

The Old Port district is a handful of cobblestone blocks packed with restaurants that would hold their own in any city. Seafood that came off a boat that morning. Craft breweries on every corner. We had dinner at a place with twelve tables and no menu — the chef brought out whatever he’d caught that day. Forty bucks a plate and worth every cent.

Portland Head Light is ten minutes from downtown. Get there early — before eight if you can. The fog burns off the rocks and the lighthouse looks like a painting. Bring your coffee.

Spend two nights here. Don’t rush it.

Day three. Take Route 1 north along the coast. The highway gets you to Acadia in three hours. Route 1 takes five. Take Route 1.

Stop in Freeport for the L.L. Bean flagship. It’s open around the clock — no locks on the doors since 1951. Pick up whatever you forgot to pack.

Camden is the town you stop in and don’t want to leave. Harbor full of sailboats. A twenty-minute drive up Mount Battie gives you a view of the whole bay. We ate lobster rolls on a bench overlooking the water and didn’t say a word for ten minutes.

Rockland has a lighthouse you can walk to on a mile-long granite breakwater. The wind picks up halfway out. It feels like you’re walking into the ocean.

I’ve been to a lot of national parks. Yellowstone. Grand Canyon. Glacier. Acadia is smaller than all of them and hit me harder than any of them.

Drive the Park Loop Road first. Twenty-seven miles of ocean, cliffs, and forest. Stop at Thunder Hole when the tide is right — the waves slam into a rock cave and send spray forty feet into the air. You’ll hear it before you see it.

Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the Atlantic coast north of Brazil. Drive up before dawn and you’re one of the first people in the country to see the sunrise. You need a vehicle reservation for the summit road — book it months ahead or you won’t get up.

Jordan Pond House has been serving popovers with butter and jam since the 1890s. Sit on the lawn. Look at the mountains reflected in the water. Order two popovers because one isn’t enough.

▸ Flights. Round trip to Portland from most major cities runs $250 to $400 per person. Book early for summer.
▸ Rental car. Five days runs $200 to $350 total. You need one — there’s no other way to do this trip.
▸ Hotels. Portland runs $180 to $300 a night for a good room. Bar Harbor is $200 to $400 in peak season. Book three to four months ahead or you’ll pay double.
▸ Food. Budget $100 to $150 a day for two. You could spend less but the seafood is the reason you’re here.
▸ Acadia pass. $35 for a seven-day vehicle pass. If you’re 62 or older, the lifetime America the Beautiful pass is $80. Covers every national park in the country.

All in, we spent about $2,800 for five days for the two of us. Hotels, food, car, gas, park fees. We didn’t pinch pennies but we didn’t go crazy either. You could trim it to $2,000 if you stay at smaller inns and eat simpler. You could push it to $4,000 if you want waterfront suites and lobster dinners every night.

The whale watching tours out of Bar Harbor run $60 to $75 a person and last three to four hours. Some people love them. We did one and spent most of it staring at empty water while a teenager gave a lecture about plankton. Save it unless someone you trust says they had a great one.

Skip the tourist shops in Bar Harbor. They sell the same stuff you’d find in any beach town anywhere. If you want something real, buy a jar of wild blueberry jam from a farm stand on Route 1. That’s Maine in a jar.

Don’t try to do Acadia in one day. I watched people sprint from overlook to overlook like they were checking boxes. That’s not how this park works. Give it two full days minimum. Three is better.

I’ve done a lot of trips. Cruises. Resorts. Golf weeks. I can’t remember most of them.

I remember every day in Maine.

The fog lifting off Portland Harbor at dawn. The sound of waves hitting Thunder Hole. A lobster dinner on a picnic table where the napkins kept blowing away. My wife’s face at the top of Cadillac Mountain when she realized we were watching the first sunrise in America.

On the flight home she pulled out her phone and started looking at September dates.

I didn’t argue.

Book it. Don’t think about it. Just go.

— Walter