Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park

Table of Contents

1. Bar Harbor
   1. Activities and Attractions
   2. Sports
      1. Kayaking
      2. Bicycling
      3. Running (marathon)
      4. Sailing
      5. Canoeing
      6. Rock Climbing
      7. Fishing
      8. Golf
      9. Miniature Golf
      10. Tennis
   3. Commercial boating
   4. Shopping
   5. Dining
      1. the Bar Harbor Motor Inn’s Reading Room and others as formal or less so
      2. Testa’s
      3. Geddy’s
      4. Ben and Bill’s
   6. Highbrow
      1. Jesup Library
      2. Criterion Theater
      3. the annual Bar Harbor Fine Arts Festival in August
      4. The Bar Harbor Historical Society’s oceanfront LaRochelle Mansion and Museum
      5. The Bar Harbor Club
      6. Music Festival
2. Acadia National Park
   1. Carriage Roads
   2. Shoreline and Mountains
3. “Off-Island” activities
   1. Summer camps for children
   2. Day-trip fishing for fly fishing in Eastern Maine
   3. Hiking expeditions into Maine’s Timberlands
4. On a Clear Day

Things to do in Bar Harbor and in Acadia National Park and where and how, plus some “Off-Island” activities

The following is a summary – admittedly a somewhat whimsical summary – of some of the countless ways in which guests of Oceansedge have forged from their vacations in Bar Harbor and in Acadia National Park many memorable adventures.

1. Bar Harbor
   Bar Harbor, a fabled oceanfront town on Coastal Maine, is the host community to the 40,000-acre Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. (Photo 1)
   
   Bar Harbor, along with Newport, RI, was the most socially significant resort in the nation during the Gilded Age following the Civil War and leading up to World War I, as the surviving Victorian mansions and other shingle-style architectural masterpieces still attest. (Photo 2)
   
   But Bar Harbor and all of Mt. Desert Island were first a gift of natural wonder manifested in the majestically beautiful Cadillac range – mountains descending, sometimes virtually straight down, to the oceanfront town’s charmed places of interest, including the following:
   1. grand, venerable, and marvelously preserved 19th century oceanfront homes.
   2. elegant and historic shops like:
      1. the Willis Rock Shop
         The wife of a US president (Eisenhower) and fashion plate celebrities among cruise ship passengers of the 20th century patronized and made famous the Rock Shop by wearing Mr. Willis’ unique gold bracelets made from gemstones. He found the gemstones on the Island’s beaches, as anyone could have done; and
      2. Sherman’s Bookstore
         After more than a century, the anachronistic emporium that is Sherman’s Bookstore still thrives despite the new Amazon. It also still offers its quaintly creaking floors and tin ceilings.
   3. the venerable and architectural period piece Jesup Library which Bostonians founded and which nationally known philanthropists lavishly endowed for over 100 years.
      
      One such benefactor to the Jesup Library was NY investment banker Morris K Jesup (1830 – 1908), an early compatriot to JP Morgan.
      
      (Jesup was later an investor in scientific pursuits like Peary’s trek to the North Pole where he established Camp Jesup – the ship heading for the North Pole paused first at Bar Harbor in deference to Jesup. (Peary was from Portland, Maine and attended Bowdoin College).
      
      (In 2022, a neighbor whose home is directly across Hulls Cove from the Oceansedge property contributed to the Jesup Library another $5,000,000).
   4. diverse restaurants, including perhaps a hundred such restaurants offering cuisines from almost every culture and continent.
   5. the bustling waterfront, including a flotilla of excursion crafts of almost every sort (whale watching, deep sea fishing, lobster fishing, sailing).
   6. the Shore Path promenade where the greatest of the American tycoons came to build residential temples to conspicuous consumption, and to rub elbows only with their peers during the summers of the late 1800s. (The public was allowed to pass along the Shore Path in order to gaze on America’s imperial Great White Fleet at anchor offshore).
   7. superlative hotels like:
      1. the historic oceanfront Bar Harbor Motor Inn which has been around since cars were a relatively new idea and summer vacations for commoners were a yet newer idea;
      2. the modern oceanfront Regency Hotel down the shoreline from the subject Oceansedge property; and
      3. the Harborside Hotel that is part of a single real estate holding reaching almost the whole length of the waterfront’s historic West Street. That holding includes the oceanfront Bar Harbor Club which had been, until World War II, the social bastion that is now the Everglades Club in Palm Beach.
   8. and innumerable other places of interest and perhaps inspiration.
      Together, these tangible souls comprise the most engaging resort community anywhere in New England.

1. Activities and Attractions
   Bar Harbor is arguably the most popular seacoast destination in New England, as it has been for almost 150 years.
   
   The surrounding 30,000-acre Acadia National Park, which is one of the most popular national parks in the US and one of few national parks east of the Mississippi, no doubt greatly adds to Bar Harbor’s appeal. (Photo 3)
   
   Therefore, Bar Harbor has a long tradition of offering to its visitors almost innumerable “things to do”, as discussed below.
2. Sports
   1. Kayaking
      1. Many of Oceansedge’s guests come to that property situated on the shoreline of Hulls Cove in Bar Harbor, for the express purpose of kayaking (Photos 4 and 5) – kayaking right from the beach below the Oceansedge property, anytime and without having to go anywhere to launch their boats.
         
         On the day of their arrival at Oceansedge, guests will find that a local vendor left at the property earlier that day all of the boats and related equipment which the guests ordered in advance.
         
         Hulls Cove is made safe for kayaking by the Town’s breakwater and by Bar Island’s sand bar restraining the North Atlantic.
         
         Hulls Cove is also the perfect beginning point for rowing along the shoreline. The shoreline is studded by Gilded Age mansions plus some hotels and restaurants with docks. The shoreline leads to Bar Harbor’s harbor and wharves, and then continues to the string of Porcupine Islands at the foot of the Cadillac Mountain Range and the Town itself.
         
         The Oceansedge property provides pink granite steps from the backyard lawn to a deck on the beach, plus overhead flood lights for early morning kayaking departures.
      2. Listed below are companies which bring kayaks to the Oceansedge property on the morning of the day of a guest’s arrival, and remove the boats at the end of the week:
         
         All of the following companies are affiliates of the very capable Glenn Tucker (GTucker70@gmail.com) who has served for many years guests of the Oceansedge property:
         1. Acadia Outfitters
            Rentals of: Kayaks, scooters, e-bikes
            207-801-9086
            106 Cottage Street, Bar Harbor
            AcadiaOutfitters.com
            
         2. Coastal Kayaking Tours
            Guided kayak tours
            800-526-8615
            48 Cottage Street, Bar Harbor
            AcadiaFun.com
            
         3. Tour Acadia
            Guided sightseeing tours
            800-526-8615
            48 Cottage Street
            Glenn@AcadiaFun.com
            
   2. Bicycling
      The Oceansedge property is located within one mile of the Reception Center for Acadia National Park. Guests can bicycle directly from the property to Acadia and its 45 miles of Carriage Roads. The Carriage Roads are devoid of vehicular traffic. (Photos 6 and 7)
      
      The following company brings bicycles to the Oceansedge property on the morning of the day of a guest’s arrival, and removes the bicycles at the end of the week:
      
      Acadia Bike Rentals
      Bike rentals
      207-288-9605 and 800-526-8615
      48 Cottage Street
      Glenn@AcadiaFun.com
   3. Running (Marathon)
      Bar Harbor conducts in October of each year the Run MDI Marathon as advertised by the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce.
   4. Sailing
      Some of Oceansedge’s guests prefer sailing. (Photo 8)
      
      They come to Oceansedge because the venerable Bar Harbor Yacht Club, which has been around since 1885, is located just across Hulls Cove (perhaps 3/4 mile). And because guests can arrange with the Harbor Master for a mooring to be set below the Oceansedge property itself.
      
      Guests sometimes charter sailboats, which are available near Hulls Cove on Mount Desert Island. Some of the vendors of those charter boats include Morris Yachts which is very proximate to Hulls Cove, and the world renowned Hinckley Yachts.
      
      Additionally, sailboat tours are available from Bar Harbor operators. The tours usually consist of sailing for a period of hours on an historic Maine coastal schooner. One vendor is Windjammer Cruises, which offers dramatic tours on the Mary Todd 4-masted schooner with red sails, along with additional boats.
   5. Canoeing
      Canoeing is becoming more common on Hulls Cove where it was very popular in the late 1800s.
      
      National Park Canoe and Kayak Rentals
      Rental of canoes and kayaks
      145 Pretty Marsh Road. Mt. Desert, Maine
      207-244-5854
      Info@NationalParkCanoeRental.com
   6. Rock Climbing
      Some, although few!, of our guests bravely climb the ocean cliffs of Acadia National Park’s shoreline (e.g., Otter Cliff and Great Head), and some of the sheer cliffs within the Park’s mountain range. (Photo 9)
      Arrangements are offered by Acadia Mountain Guides Climbing School.
   7. Fishing
      As mentioned, harborside operators offer deep sea fishing tours from large boats, usually wandering dozens of miles from Bar Harbor’s dock.
      
      But some Oceansedge guests sometimes fish from the shore of Hulls Cove, at the foot of the Oceansedge property. Flounder, sea bass, pollock. Usually caught with metal lures (Dare Devils with clams), versus fly fishing.
      
      More of our guests often turn to fly fishing in the Park’s many lakes and ponds, which are spectacularly beautiful. Trout and landlocked salmon at the bottom of crystal clear and still water. Long Pond and Jordan Pond, among others.
      
      Oceansedge offers to introduce its guests to a Maine Guide who arranges for more sophisticated fresh water fishing, on the mainland but within easy driving distance of Bar Harbor. Day trips or overnight. All equipment provided. Forest settings.
      
      (The same Guide offers day trips for off-Island bird shooting in the Fall. Two superb hunting dogs in company).
   8. Golfing
      The preeminent golf course on Mt. Desert Island is Kebo. Kebo abuts both the Town and Acadia National Park, and occupies a valley at the foot of Cadillac Mountain. (Photo 10)
      
      Founded in 1888, it is one of the ten oldest golf courses in the US, and is surely one of the country’s most beautiful courses.
      
      President Taft, who at nearly 300 pounds may have been an inspiration for the invention of golf carts, was one of the first to make Kebo famous. But Kebo was renowned among the glitterati during the Gilded Age.
      
      Kebo is available to the public. Other golf courses on Mt. Desert Island are generally available only by invitation, which invitation would be wise to accept with alacrity because the offer would otherwise likely not come again.
   9. Miniature Golf
      Pirates Cove Miniature Golf near Hulls Cove in Bar Harbor.
      Fun. But no one is known to have become and rich and famous for pursuing this sport.
   10. Tennis
       Arguably, one of the first tennis courts in the US was constructed on a former farm field at Schooner Head, not far from a small sawmill then busily consuming August pine and spruce trees harvested on that now priceless peninsula.
       
       Bar Harbor’s high-society rival, Newport, RI, gained the distinction of being the first to give the sport national distinction in 1881, with the creation of the Newport Casino (not for gamblers although “risk takers” were pedigreed). But Bar Harbor made up for lost time by creating the oceanfront and Tudor-style Bar Harbor Bath (swimming) and Tennis Club. (Photo 11: Mr. Cassatt absent from the Penn Central Railroad for August).
       
       The then reorganized Bar Harbor Club opened in September 1929 just weeks ahead of the Crash that was the beginning of the Great Depression. Nonetheless, most of the Club’s elite members weathered the Depression or profited by it. (An accountant’s ledger book showed at the time a charge of $1 for three tennis balls, the same price paid to desperate men for a day’s labor).
       
       The one historic location in Bar Harbor for tennis remains the former Bar Harbor Club building on West Street on the ocean. The late international real estate developer Tommy Walsh of Bangor preserved and improved the Bar Harbor Club property, to his great and enduring credit.
       
       Tennis courts are available, not far from Hulls Cove, at the distinctive and oceanfront Regency Hotel, and also owned by Tommy Walsh.
       
       Tennis courts can be found in other towns on Mount Desert Island. But they are generally under the domain of impenetrable private clubs.
3. Commercial boating tours
   Several harborside vendors in Bar Harbor offer boating excursions. (Photo 12)
   
   Those excursions involve deep-sea fishing; whale watching (Bar Harbor Whale Watching Company); and oceanview tours of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island, plus nearby small islands notable for lighthouses, seals, and sea birds like the colorful Atlantic puffins.
4. Shopping
   Bar Harbor offers many shops although some of its best are some of its oldest, as with Sherman’s Bookstore (Photo 13) and the Willis Rock Shop. Likewise, the Kimball Shop (Photo 14) in nearby Northeast Harbor where it is good planning for shoppers to bring along more than one stout credit card. Several art stores featuring not inexpensive Mainescapes include the Argosy galleries.
5. Dining
   Bar Harbor is said to offer as many as 100 restaurants.
   
   They range from the formal and superlative Bar Harbor Motor Inn on the ocean (Photo 15), to the legendary and very casual Geddy’s and the in-between West Street Café and Paddy’s Irish Pub.
   
   Some restaurants have been around a long time, like Testa’s Restaurant – owned by 4 generations of Testa’s. The restaurant still presides over the height of Main Street above the waterfront.
   
   Testa’s Restaurant
   The original Joe Testa created in the 1920s during the Jazz Age his very Italian and forever popular restaurants, in Palm Beach and then in Bar Harbor. (“Palms in the winter, pines in the summer”, as the dinner mat read).
   
   He saw the same customers in both locations – most of those customers were on full-time vacations, and had fabulous second (or third) homes in the right places to be at the right time of each year: Bar Harbor and Palm Beach.
   
   Even after the Fire of 1947 when 100 of the greatest summer homes were lost, and even into the 1970s before Maine’s greatest architect Alan Baldwin remodeled the restaurant and the whole town block in the 1980s, the routine at Testa’s in Bar Harbor was much the same .
   
   During that time, Thursday evenings were “maids’ night off” ahead of weekend parties when the staff at the summer cottages were busy day and night. So, on Thursday evenings, faced with the dolorous prospect of needing to shift for themselves, the chief patricians among Bar Harbor’s summerites flocked to Testa’s. There, they took refuge for the evening in the coveted “garden room” at the back of the restaurant.
   
   The best customers came again on the weekends following social events of earlier in the day in Bar Harbor (e.g.,sailing regattas, golf tournaments, tennis tournaments and swimming meets at the Bar Harbor Club, and board meetings which were held at the time on Saturdays ); or at the end of the evening following dinner dances at the Bar Harbor Club, private parties on West Street or in Northeast Harbor, concerts, or the ultra summer event which was the 4th of July .
   
   While he was around, Joe Senior would go from table to table in the garden room greeting the customers whom he had known on a first-name basis all of their lives, as he also knew their parents and children.
   
   Sons Mike and Joe Testa later upheld the traditions of what was then a half century at Testa’s: perfection, personableness, and patrimonial preferential treatment. At the time, Testa’s was the only restaurant in town that mattered, and it is now the only survivor of the eating establishments of that half century.
   
   Photo 16 shows the wonderfully affable Joe Testa II on an early spring day in the 1960s (the Christmas lights are still strung across Main Street behind him), personally taking charge of watering the flowers in his window boxes, making sure everything was done just right.
   
   At the height of dinner service on most evenings, Joe, wearing his unspotted full length white kitchen apron, would make his way between the tables in the garden room dining area, and then outside into the garden. Customers watching through the picture windows would see him conspicuously pluck vine grown tomatoes. The tomatoes would soon reappear on the tables inside as the freshest possible vegetables – an incomparable marketing touch.
   
   From the same garden (or others), Mike Testa would gather strawberries which he would then join with a mysterious slurry that he mixed himself in the mornings. The end result were non pareil strawberry pies dolloped with real creme fraiche whip cream (not pedestrian ice cream). The pies were an epicurean work of art never to be matched by anyone anywhere, and now no longer available.
   
   It might be said the whole social milieu of the Jazz Age and the post-War years (both wars) departed from Bar Harbor in the 1970s along with the last of those strawberry pies. For awhile, with just 5% of the world population, Americans manufactured more than half of the world’s products, possessed 2/3 of mankind’s accumulated wealth, knew that they were everywhere invincible, and lived accordingly.
   
   Geddy’s
   Some restaurants have been around for not as long as Testa’s Restaurant at a century, but nonetheless for a half century.
   
   The present Geddy’s restaurant is supremely well-managed restaurant. It is also a fun place to be, as it has always been since Gerry Mitchell created it in the 1970s.
   
   For awhile during the war years (Vietnam), the intelligentsia of political theory concluded that, if an 18-year old could be drafted and entrusted with an M16, he should be able to buy a beer if he got home in one piece. Likewise, he should be able to get a liquor license.
   
   So, when he was perhaps just 18 years old, weight-lifter Gerry, who was as restive as a race horse, somehow purchased or leased a property on Cottage Street. The property he cornered was unabashedly located across from the Town Office in downtown Bar Harbor.
   
   He created there a raucous bar and thunderous dance hall. He constructed it on- the-cheap with a floor consisting of trucked-in beach sand. He added a partial and flimsy roof made from surplus WWII Quonset Hut sheet metal plus a paltry string of naked light bulbs for intentionally dim illumination.
   
   It was his first of at least three bars. He suggestively named the second bar “The Green Door” after the off color movie “Behind the Green Door”. Later came “Geddy’s” where he survived being shot in the back by a rival with a shotgun.
   
   Gerry Mitchell struck gold with Geddy’s.
   
   He somehow drew there stellar entertainers including Bonnie Rait and Arlo Guthrie and who knows now who else. Bar Harbor never saw again the likes of those generational icons who could not say no to Gerry. Attendance was wall to wall, as the Town’s code enforcement officers and local police took note, but it was Gerry Mitchell who generally single handedly kept the peace there..
   
   Gerry Mitchell’s precocious whirlwind may have been enough to make him a very youthful millionaire. He was also a local folk hero during that anti-establishment and rebellious era before Bar Harbor regained its composure.
   
   Today, a priceless photo from a half century ago depicting Bar Harbor’s grinning and forever irrepressible Gerry Mitchell still hangs from a wall in Geddy’s. The photo accompanies other photos and countless license plates and various cultural relics on the walls of the present Geddy’s.
   
   But the photo is most notable for showing Gerry in the close company of a bemused Mother Teresa. The photo is the sort of generational emblem that John Lennon might have imagined.
   
   Almost incomprehensibly in retrospect, in the 1980s, Gerry sold Geddy’s to a figure from the entirely opposite end of the then social spectrum. John Davis had graduated from the Naval Academy. He had been the captain of a nuclear submarine which, I think, traveled under the polar ice cap when the world still had one. But Mr. Davis had also been the distinguished president of Tenneco Realty in Houston where I first met him; so, John Davis knew a thing or two about the real estate version of a diamond in the rough.
   
   Mr. Davis’ son Arthur took charge of the restaurant right away. He created during the last nearly half century one of the most successful, and flawlessly run, and valuable businesses in Bar Harbor. He employs there scores of very hard working young people, year round.
   
   (Arthur is likewise the proprietor of the excellent oceanfront Bayview Hotel, a boutique luxury hotel of 26 units. The Bayview property was originally the site of a summer estate constructed in 1885, Bournemouth. The owners included a Mr. Walley, a lawyer of some note from Back Bay in Boston; the Harrisons of Northern Virginia and of Confederate fame and glory, and the McCormicks of Chicago and of mechanical harvesting fame and profound good fortune.)
   
   American Pie
   Long long time ago, I can still remember
   How that music used to make me smile
   And I knew if I had my chance
   That I could make those people dance
   And maybe they’d be happy for awhile.
   
   Don McLean
   1971
   
   Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium
   For most people, Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium does not fall into the “dining” category. But visiting Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium is a necessary self indulgence.
   
   Visiting this de facto ice cream factory on Main Street is also worth the trip for observing two marvels, one financial and one canine.
   
   Ben & Bill’s makes rivers of ice cream. The process goes on in the backroom, non- stop, day and night.
   
   Dozens of customers happily wait in line at any one time in order to avail themselves of a small portion of the flood of ice cream. The ice cream is definitely worth the wait, and worth the hefty price as well.
   
   A stable of servers get the servings over the counter to the customers at the rate of perhaps one every 30 seconds during the rush hour. Rush hour is virtually all day and all evening.
   
   The first marvel: it is possible to observe here perhaps $10 in cash transacted three times a minute for long hours at a time every day of the week. Perhaps like watching the Philadelphia mint stamping out new silver dollars.
   
   Meanwhile, each customer who has secured his huge and toppling ice cream cone, and who has made his way out of the store, generally settles onto a park bench on Main Street. Here, another member of his family has been waiting with the family’s golden retriever.
   
   Along Main Street, there is a legion of seated golden retrievers (and some aspirants to being goldens), each of whom is visually riveted to the ice cream held by his owner. The owner could not get to the end of the ice cream cone any more unhurriedly, in the dog’s unsolicited opinion. The motionless golden looks on with his lapidary stare, waiting and waiting and waiting.
   
   Second marvel: notwithstanding dogs seemingly occupying most of the Main Street sidewalk, either seated and staring, or coming or going and looking forward or backward, there is no interaction among the dogs, friendly or otherwise. It is all about staring at the dog owners’ ice cream cones. Great numbers of beautiful golden retrievers (and some wanna-be’s), just staring, mute and motionless.
6. High Brow
   1. The Jesup Memorial Library, mentioned above. A hundred years old and more revered every year. Its annual outdoor book sale in August is superlative.
   2. The Criterion movie theater. Constructed in 1932, the Criterion is a rare survivor of the Art Deco era, and a visual experience in itself. (Photo 17)
      
      B J Morison owned the property during its darkest hour 50 years ago. She was then the elderly and former wife of no less than Harvard’s historian Samuel Eliot Morison of Northeast Harbor and Boston.
      
      Devoted to the preservation of the Criterion building and the tradition, she ran the whole business virtually alone, including selling the movie tickets at the street window while dodging inside to the lobby to make the buttered popcorn. She then went home to write detective novels.
   3. The annual Bar Harbor Fine Arts Festival in August.
   4. The Bar Harbor Historical Society’s oceanfront LaRochelle Mansion and Museum (Photo 18) on the ocean on West Street.
      
      The 41-room manse was built for George Sullivan Bowdoin, the treasurer of J P Morgan Company who was a descendant of Alexander Hamilton and of the founder of Bowdoin College.
      
      Philadelphia’s Dorrances of the Campbell Soup Company later owned the LaRochelle mansion. It was the lesser of two principal properties owned by the Dorrances in Bar Harbor; they also summered in Newport, RI.
      
      The Dorrances’ patriarch owned the expansive Kenarden cottage property located on the other side of downtown Bar Harbor and abutting, for awhile, an Indian encampment. Kenarden was the greatest of the more than 100 summer cottages; Dorrance had purchased it from John S Kennedy, a savage investment banker not related to Joe Kennedy of Boston.
   5. The Bar Harbor Club , wisely preserved and still evocative of last of the Gilded Age in Bar Harbor. (Photo 19)
   6. Bar Harbor Music Festival and the Bar Harbor Town summer concerts on the Village Green.

2. Acadia
   After more than 100 years, Acadia shows itself to be the best combined handiwork work of: a Divine provider; the greatest of the American philanthropists, the Rockefellers; and Harvard visionaries.
   
   There is nothing quite like Acadia’s approachable but still stunning natural escarpments above the ocean. Its Carriage Trails that are dozens of miles of bicycling and jogging and hiking routes where buildings and vehicles are never seen amidst forests and lakes and meadows. And its mountain top views of the earliest sunrise in America and the most glorious moonrises over the North Atlantic as well.
   1. The Carriage Roads: Hiking and Bicycling
      1. Ease of access and use
         Acadia National Park’s Reception Center, which is located just 1 mile from the Oceansedge property, is a point of departure for the Park’s 45 miles of “carriage roads”. (Photo 20 and 21).
         
         Recently completed road construction between the Oceansedge property and the Park’s Reception Center, now make it possible for our guests to bicycle safely and directly from the house to the Reception Center. One mile.
         
         The same company mentioned below (Glenn Tucker’s Coastal Kayaking Tours and Acadia Bike) makes available to Oceansedge guests bicycles and related equipment, delivered to the property on the day of a guest’s arrival.
      2. History
         John D Rockefeller, Jr. (Photo 22) was the primary catalyst for the construction of the roads made with crushed pink gravel and made wide enough to allow two horse drawn carriages to pass – a project carried out at the turn of the 20th century with some spitefulness toward the resented introduction of automobiles to Mount Desert Island.
         
         The carriage roads became available in 1913 – just before the federal government’s institution of the progressive income tax legislation which might have daunted Mr. Rockefeller’s road-building plan if the legislation had come sooner.
      3. The roads
         
      4. The roads were intended for walkers, hikers, horseback riders, and horse-driven carriages (hence the “carriage roads”). (Photos 23).
         
         The crushed gravel roads were wide enough to allow for two carriages to pass. They were (and still are) magnificently maintained.
         
         They meander through the most beautiful bucolic scenery in America, often over stone bridges that are architectural masterpieces which would be hopelessly unaffordable to replicate today.
         
         These roads – which are still devoid of automobiles – make for fabulous bicycling and hiking and jogging during favorable seasons, and for cross-country skiing and some snowmobiling in winter months.
   2. The shoreline and the mountains
      The visual experience of Acadia National Park is at its best along the 27-mile Ocean Drive that circumnavigates most of the eastern and southeastern side of Mount Desert Island. Gorgeous views of the rough surf on that side of the Island, and of some of the Island’s most spectacular ocean view homes. (Photo 24 and 25).
      
      Likewise, the Park roads meandering through, and to the top of, the Cadillac Mountain Range (Photo 26 and 26a) are as beautiful as first-time visitors imagined, or more so. The routes are spectacular in every season.
   3. Scenic tours by bus and van and trolley and car
      Several downtown operators offer scenic tours of Acadia National Park, especially as to Cadillac Mountain; Ocean Drive which circumnavigates much of the eastern shoreline of the Island; and Bar Harbor’s historic neighborhoods. (27, 28, and 28a)
      
      The operators transport their customers by bus and by van and by trolley.
      
      Some of those operators include “Tour Acadia”. Another is “Oli’s Trolley”. (“Oli’s Trolley” Might have won for one of Bar Harbor’s truly very successful and humorous entrepreneurs a SAG Award (Sagacious Advertisers Gimmick) for catchy alliteration, although he declined to give up the “Dink’s Taxi” trade name).
      
      Oceansedge previously made available to its guests a British sports car (a Triumph TR6, 1973). (Photo 29). It was, of course, like no other means of transportation up and down and around Acadia’s mountain passes and Ocean Drive cliffs and winding roads. The car-touring was an existential experience but arriving back at Oceansedge still alive was an ordinary relief.
3. “Off-Island” activities
   1. Summer camps for children
      Guests of Oceansedge are sometimes parents of children on their way to or from summer camps, for which Maine has been renown since at least the early 1900s.
      
      Maine Summer Camps is a non-profit organization with a main office in Portland, Maine. It serves over 120 Maine summer camps for children – in effect, thousands of children from throughout the US. (Oceansedge has been a past sponsor of that organization).
      
      Two of the camps most proximate to Oceansedge – and coincidentally two of the very best of all the summer camps in Maine – are:
      1. Alford Lake Camp near chic Camden (https://www.alfordlakecamp.com/), which camp has been around for 115 years; and
      2. The Robin Hood Camp in Brooksville.
         (The property owner of Oceansedge is a sentimental alumna of Alford Lake Camp).
   2. day trips for fly fishing and hunting in Eastern Maine
      Some of the best of fishing lodges in the US are in Eastern Maine, on or near Grand Lake Stream, variously 2 to 3 hours in driving time from Bar Harbor. (Photo 30)
      
      Two such lodges are:
      1. Leen’s Lodge, founded by the hugely colorful Stan Leen of Bangor in 1958, when Bangor’s standing as the 2nd wealthiest city per capita in the world was still in living memory.
         
         Although justifiably not inexpensive, Leen’s Lodge has been the favored destination of some of the best of fly fishermen (and hunters) from Maine and beyond for most of a century. Some guests came in past years just for the robust Grand Lake Streamer cocktails made with “branch water”.
      2. Weatherby’s, which has roots reaching back to the opening of that part of Maine in the mid-1800s by ancestors of the owner of Oceansedge. Weatherby’s has always drawn guests like Ted Williams and other serious and capable and ardent fishing and hunting enthusiasts.
         
         Weatherby’s offers Orvis equipment, excellent guides, and plenty of firewood for chilly early mornings there when the low fog on the lake says that even that ice water in the lake is warmer than the air.
         
         The proprietor of Oceansedge would gladly facilitate trips to these or other lodges, such trips likely being for at least a few nights there.
   3. hiking expeditions into Maine’s timberlands
      The proprietor of Oceansedge would also gladly facilitate, through a Maine Guide, trips to Maine’s North Woods and Baxter State Park.
      
      A usual objective is to ascend the terrifying Knife Edge to the summit of Mt. Katahdin, the distant crown of Maine, 150 miles from Bar Harbor. (Photo 31).
      
      Expeditions into Maine’s North Woods require overnight stays in primitive accommodations, and are best undertaken by the young and the experienced, with a darned good Guide. (The first expeditions to Katahdin were made only with Indian guides).
4. On a clear day
   It is not possible to see Mt. Katahdin from the back porch of the Oceansedge property, to paraphrase Sarah Palin.
   
   But, on a clear day, it is possible to see from the summit of Cadillac Mountain, not just Katahdin and much of Maine, but also the vivid panorama of Hulls Cove and Bar Harbor and the vast shorelines and mountains of Acadia National Park immediately below. (Photo 32)

On a Clear Day

On a clear day
Rise and look around you
And you’ll see who you are
On a clear day
How it will astound you
That the glow of your being Outshines every star
You’ll feel part of every mountain,
Sea and shore
You can hear
From far and near
A word you’ve never, never heard before… And on a clear day… On a clear day… You can see forever…
And ever…
And ever…
And ever more…
You’ll feel part of every mountain,
Sea and shore
You can hear
From far and near
A word you’ve never, never heard before… And on a clear day… On a clear day… You can see forever…
And ever…
And ever…
And ever more…

Frank Sinatra, lyrics by The Peddlers in 1966