Tramel's travel blog: Life-sized rocking horses & blueberry pop in Bar Harbor, Maine
A bald eagle. A life-sized rocking horse. Blueberry pop. Lifestyles of the rich and famous.
I saw them all Tuesday as we continued our Maine adventure, in Bar Harbor. I am not the first.
Bar Harbor hosts millions of thousands tourists a year – many courtesy of the adjoining Acadia National Park – to its natural beauty along the Maine coastline and its bustling downtown shops.
Maine bills itself as Vacationland, and Bar Harbor is the No. 1 reason why.
Bar Harbor, population about 5,000 permanent residents, isn’t Branson, Missouri, or Gatlinburg, Tennessee, or Ocean City, Maryland. Bar Harbor isn’t big enough for that craziness. Bar Harbor is more like Lake Placid, New York, a charming village with a lot going on, only instead of a lake, you’ve got the Atlantic, and you’ve got the national park, all of which draws not only Americans from New England and beyond, but international tourists. And the cruise ships have returned to Bar Harbor this year, for the first time since 2019; pre-pandemic, hundreds of cruise ships every year docked in Bar Harbor.
We didn’t stay overnight in Bar Harbor. We drove over from Bangor, about 45 miles inland. Bar Harbor has all kinds of resorts and hotels, but they were a little pricey for my taste. I’m partial to Marriotts, and Marriott hasn’t ventured into the Bar Harbor business. But I checked the Hampton Inn; $527 a night. And the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel, sitting hard by Frenchman Bay, had rooms for about $440 a night, with spectacular views. The Atlantic Oceanside might be worth it, for the views alone.
Still, the drive over from Bangor was fun. We went through a couple of small towns – Ellsworth, Trenton – that sport the coastal New England feel. Trish the Dish and I agree; Maine is one of the most unique places in America. Most everywhere you go, you can say, “This feels a lot like...” You don’t say that in Maine. Maine feels like nowhere else, unless it’s Nova Scotia.
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How many people visit Acadia National Park?
We didn’t tour Acadia National Park, but if you love national parks, Acadia apparently is the place to be. One of the most popular national parks in the U.S.
Acadia drew four million people in 2021, creating all kinds of congestion problems in the park (and Bar Harbor). Acadia, like Bar Harbor, actually sits on Mount Desert Island and portions of 17 other tiny islands. Acadia protects the natural beauty of what Maine calls the rocky headlands, which include Cadillac Mountain, the tallest mountain along the entire Atlantic Coast. Acadia touts granite domes, glacial erratics, U-shaped valleys, cobble beaches, lakes, streams, wetlands, forests, meadows and coastlines. An historic carriage road system, financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., weaves through its 49,000 acres.
Bar Harbor is the home base for Acadia. And we experienced Acadia via boat. We drove straight to the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel, which is the launching point for a variety of boat tours, plus the massive ferry to Nova Scotia.
Our two-hour cruise toured past the Bar Harbor coastline, then out among the islands just off Harbor, many of which make up part of Acadia.
The Bar Harbor shoreline is filled with magnificent homes high atop the cliffs looking down on Frenchman Bay. Bar Harbor was an early destination for the wealthy.
By the 1880s, Bar Harbor – then known as Eden – had 30 hotels, accommodating the tourists arriving by train and ferry. Eden rivaled Newport, Rhode Island, as the premium destination for the rich and famous.
Huge mansions were built along the elevated coastline. The Rockefellers donated about a third of the land that became Acadia National Park; future vice president Nelson Rockefeller was born in Bar Harbor. J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Astor family all built estates along the coast.
In 1918, Eden was renamed Bar Harbor, after the sand and gravel bar, which pops up at low tide and allows pedestrians to access Bar Island.
The islands in Frenchman Bay are mostly uninhabited. But wildlife is abundant. We saw a bald eagle perched atop a tree. We circled a community of seals; not as big or as curious as those you’ll find in San Diego, but still fascinating. We managed to get a few porpoises to frolic in the wake of our boat, though not with the consistency we’ve found down in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable, but it was a decent-sized boat, with probably 75 passengers, and the sound system wasn’t great. We sat at the back for picture-taking purposes, so we didn’t catch everything our guide said. Still, the boat tour was a good way to learn more about the area and Bar Harbor.
Back on land, we drove into town and found a parking space – not easy, but I paid $7.50 electronically for about six hours – and set about touring the commercial district. Five or six blocks, built around the Village Green, sort of a town square without a courthouse.
Hotels – some quaint, some not, all shoehorned in wherever they could fit – lead to the commercial district. Some gal was giving a concert to probably 40 people, sprinkled in the tree-shaded courtyard of a bed-and-breakfast.
Restaurants were everywhere, with lots of outside seating, selling mostly the various Maine staples of lobster and chowder. Most seemed overpriced.
The Dish found a variety of interesting stores, including a wood shop, which declares all of its profits go to conservation and which had a life-sized rocking horse. Now, life-sized refers to maybe a Shetland pony, but still. A massive wooden rocking horse. I would have been hard-pressed to figure out how to mount it myself. It had no price tag, but I’m guessing at least $5,000. One of the dangdest things I’ve ever seen.
We toured an art gallery with fabulous paintings of Maine, which is quite the state for artists. I have a nose for quality; my favorite painting of a Mainescape was listed at $6,000, the highest price I saw in the shop. And no, we are not taking it home with us.
A bunch of shops are Acadia-based, banking on the attraction of the national park. Many sell blueberry-related items. Blueberries, of course, rival lobster in terms of Maine identity, though the lobsters create quite a bit more economy.
I even had a blueberry pop, straight out of a bottle. It’s a little like a Grape Nehi, not quite as tangy. Not bad, but not likely to catch Dr Pepper or Coca-Cola anytime soon.
Soon enough, we had covered all of Bar Harbor. Cool place. Fascinating place. But for the Tramels of Cleveland County, Oklahoma, not the kind of place we’d want to spend four or five days. Millions of people would disagree with us, and that’s fine.
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Weather in Maine is perfect
But unless you’re dedicated to several days at Acadia National Park or lucky enough to have a spectacular view from your hotel balcony and content enough to sit there consistently, one day in Bar Harbor is enough.
We headed back towards Bangor and had spotted a potential dinner spot.
On the way into Bar Harbor, we pulled into a roadside fish shack in Ellsworth.
Dorr Seafood market is a family-run business, complete with its own fishermen, with a place in Bangor and a tiny place along Highway 1 in Ellsworth. We stopped at the latter for lunch; a little place no bigger than 40x15 feet. They sell fresh fish to locals and meals to tourists.
The Dish and I each had a clam chowder, and we shared a $22 lobster roll. All quite fantastic, consumed outside on a picnic table in the 75-degree Maine weather. Dorr also sold little tubs of lobster meat to snack on. Sort of the way you can get a little container of pasta salad or something at a deli, you can get a little container of lobster meat, for something like $25. We passed this time, but I won’t the next time.
For dinner, we stopped in Trenton, not too far outside Bar Harbor, at a place called Gateway Lunt’s Lobster Pound. A little restaurant with indoor seating but also walkup service for people on the go or wanting to sit out back at picnic tables.
Turns out, flies have found their way to Maine, so all things being equal, I’ll take indoor dining. I got a lobster dinner for $27 and the Dish had shrimp. I told her we were a long way from Louisiana, and she told me where to stick my geography.
One of the waitresses said this is her 34th summer to work at Lunt’s. She said Maine workers in the hospitality business go hard in the tourist season, then relax. The tourist seasons goes probably May through October.
We finished off our dinner with a piece of blueberry pie. Very good. Not as good as Trish the Dish’s, but good.
Then it was back to Bangor, having done what the Rockefellers and Astors long have done. Vacationed in Bar Harbor, if only for a day.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Maine travel guide: Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park tourist havens
