You haven’t heard from us in a while on this blog, but we are OK, thanks for asking. In April, on a return trip home, we had a bit of an accident (we were fine) that sidelined any travels for a bit.
This summer we spent much time walking the beach, biking, scootering, forcing down twin lobsters at Wally’s (local biker bar), and an occasional fried dough from Blink’s. We did balance it all out with a ton of fresh fruits, grains, and vegetables – just to head off inflammatory messages from our crack medical team, Trails End Medical.
Anyway, the point of the story is not to belabor our slothful living but to share our camping trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. We felt we needed to reduce the stress and anxiety of retirement, as I am sure you can well imagine.
If you haven’t been to Acadia NP before, you need to correct that oversight. It is an amazing national park with much to offer. Acadia NP is closer to the Canadian border than it is to New Hampshire. Oddly enough, we saw very few visiting Canadian license plates. I wonder why. Hmm…
This place is magnificent – if you love trees, quiet, gorgeous ocean views, hiking and biking trails, and pull-through campsites with electricity, water, and fire rings. There are close to 100 campsites in total, with over 8 miles of biking trails and 4-5 miles of hiking trails.
Apparently, Nana felt the same way about this place as us.
The Schoodic Woods have been used for over thousands of years by the Wabanaki Confederacy for harvesting seafood, and in 1929 Acadia National Park was the first national park east of the Mississippi, created largely through private land conservation donations.
In the general timeline of campgrounds, the Schoodic Woods Campground is new. In 2011, in order to prevent the development of a very large private resort development, the land the Schoodic District resides on was acquired through an anonymous donor and conservation groups, added to Acadia NP, and in 2015 the campground was opened.
We biked around the district. There are miles of biking trails (small stone) that meander through the park, but we spent much time biking on the road. The road, which is largely one way, circles the peninsula and offers extraordinary ocean views.
If hiking is your thing, there are trails throughout the park. We did one hike (about 3 miles), right from our campsite, that was gorgeous. We were a few weeks ahead of peak foliage, but there were some early signs of things to come.
Once we parked at our campsite, we didn’t move the vehicle until we left. But there are certainly places to go for dining right in Winter Harbor, or a ferry or drive to Bar Harbor. But other than hiking and biking, we just hung out around a fire pit, and cooked at our campsite. This campground and the surrounding area are definitely going on our “we’ll be back” list!