Thanks for visiting the blog! One thing I LOVE to do is travel. Matt and I both aren’t big fans of crowds or museums, so we tend to do a lot of hiking, driving, and exploring. Today I’m sharing some photos and recommendations from our recent trip to Maine! Last month I shot Joanna and Isaiah’s wedding in Bangor which is only 2 hours from the Bar Harbor area, Acadia National Park, and plenty of cute little coastal towns! We decided to make a trip out of it and spend a few days exploring all that the coast has to offer!

Going in to this trip, Matt and I didn’t know what to expect! Since Maine is so far away from South Carolina, we haven’t really spend a whole lot of time thinking about the state! I have to say we were both totally surprised by the beauty of the coast and the rural areas that we drove through! I’ll walk you through our trip and offer my advice if you plan on visiting the Maine Coast!

1. Drive through some of the smaller coastal towns and make stops along the way!

Apparently Bar Harbor is a really popular town on the coast (we had no idea! haha), but there are so many other quaint towns that the coast has to offer! Matt and I actually only spent about 15 minutes in Bar Harbor because there was a lot of traffic and a whole mess of people! We like to find quieter things to do when we travel! Our first day in Maine was spent driving along the coast and stopping for things along the way! We started in Bangor and drove down to Stockton Springs and then all the way down to Owls Head. Thankfully I have a few friends who are from Maine so they gave us some recommendations of places to stop! Here are the highlights:

Camden was one of our favorite towns that we drove through! The streets are lined with Bed & Breakfasts! Staying here would definitely be a blast. The harbor is beautiful. If you like window shopping or walking around quaint towns, this is the place for you!

On our way we stopped at this little river for some photos! The scenery all over is just gorgeous!

We ended up stopping at a State Park that had a couple hiking trails. It cost $8 to get in, and although there wasn’t a whole lot to offer at the park, we did enjoy the view!

This is the Owls Head Lighthouse! Owls Head was one of our favorite places that we stopped. We ended up taking an unmarked trail down to a gorgeous beach!  See below:

More images from Owls Head:

The water everywhere we went in Maine was so much clearer than the waters in SC!

After we made it to Owls Head, we trekked back up the coast to Rockland and then back to stop in Camden.

We stopped at an amazing ice cream stand called Dorman’s Dairy Dream! It was so good! Unfortunately, I dropped my ice cream cone in the sand. 🙁 So much disappointment…

In Rockland we stopped at the Breakwater! It is more than 4,000 feet long and made of granite! At the end is the cutest lighthouse!

In Camden we drove to the top of Mount Batie. The views were incredible!

Matt waving to a fellow tourist on top of Mount Battie.

2. Go to Acadia National Park for some hiking!

We went to Acadia two different times and hiked 3 trails. We were so impressed with the scenery here! We hiked 3 trails. The Razorback Trail, The Beehive Trail, and the Gorge Path to the top of Cadillac Mountain!

View from the Razorback Trail

The Beehive Trail was our favorite trail! It was a short but exhilarating hike! The first half of the hike is treacherous – there are cliffs to one side! There are metal ladders and handles to help hikers along the way.

View from The Beehive Trail. So worth it!

The other side of the view from The Beehive Trail.

We also took the Gorge Path to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Keep your eyes open for wild blueberries!

Fog on top of Cadillac Mountain

The view!!

If you’re in a time crunch, there is also a road that you can drive to the summit of Cadillac Mountain! If you hike instead of drive, you’ll be surprised at the amount of tourists at the top who took the “easy way up!”

If you plan to spend some time hiking one of the many trails in Acadia, I recommend visiting Joe’s Guide to Acadia National Park on the web! He has helpful descriptions of all the trails including directions, parking strategies, and photos!

3. Take a Boat Ride to a Remote Island!

If you’re lucky, you can get a ferry ride to Isle au Haut in Acadia National Park! We didn’t plan ahead enough for this, so instead we took a ferry ride from the Northeast Harbor to the Cranberry Isles! We loved the peek this gave us into the lives of locals on the islands! Some people are fortunate enough to live on the islands and take the passenger ferries every day to transport their groceries or visit the mainland!

Sunset at Bar Harbor

4. Visit Schoodic Point

We LOVED Schoodic Point. It was the most private of all of the places we visited. Instead of hanging out at the actual point where all the tourists go, we stopped on the side of the road and found a little trail to take us out near the water. There was literally no one in sight! We loved it so much we ended up going back there the next day to watch the sunset, and then we drove to the point when it was dark to do some stargazing. It just so happened that there was a meteor shower that night! The sky was vast and clear and the stars were so bright!

Sunset at Schoodic Point

We loved Maine and can’t wait to go back! The weather was gorgeous! It wasn’t too hot at all – perfect hiking weather (bring a sweater if you plan to stay out on the coast at sunset)! If you’ve been to Maine, I’d love to hear some of your favorite places to visit! Leave them in the comments below.

Happy Travels!

– Christi

P.S. Flying fascinates me, so here are some photos from our flights 🙂