Spectacular Acadia National Park - New England part 6

We left Pumpkin Patch RV Park in Hermon, ME today and I didn’t want to leave. It is a lovely park and we enjoyed just hanging out at the campground. Sometimes you arrive at a park and a feeling of contentment comes over you. This place is like that. It is very clean, quiet, and peaceful. The staff and seasonal campers take pride in the park and it show with how they take care of it. They water and weed the flowers daily and the lawn is mowed frequently.

There are pretty gardens and hanging flowers in various locations throughout the park, dog walks along each side and large enclosed dog run at one end. Trent really enjoyed that. No swimming pool but for entertainment, there is a small game room with a pool table as well as outdoor games setup in the park. The sites are larger than most parks, some sunny and some shaded. We got a very large shaded site so enjoyed being outside this past week. It was sunny and breezy just about every day. Ahh, the simple things that make me happy!

Hermon, ME is close to Bangor so we spent one day in Bangor. We decided to go see the Paul Bunyan statue and then take a walk along the river, There is a nice park with a walking path but the path was closed at one end for a construction project so it wasn’t a long walk. I got a few pictures and we sat for awhile watching the river go by. Luckily Sea Dog Brewery was beside the park so we stopped for lunch on their deck. River watching was more fun with a tasty beer!

We chose this area to visit Acadia National Park which was a little over an hour’s drive away. I initially planned to stay closer to Acadia but couldn’t get into the RV park I wanted and others in the area were too expensive. I found Pumpkin Patch online with our Escapee’s membership. It is the first time using that membership and it was a great choice.

We decided to head to Acadia early in the day to get there before it got too crowded. We arrived at 7:30 AM and there already were cars in the visitor center lot. The building wasn’t open yet but we were able to review the map and compare it to the smaller one that I had from a tour book to determine which way to go first. We chose the loop road around the most popular side of the park with the thought to see all of that before the pull off spots were too full to park.

That was a very good choice. We took our time and stopped at many places along the loop road. I had a reservation to drive up to the top of Cadillac Mountain but learned the day before that our truck was too long. It was over the length limit by a foot so I canceled the reservation. Hopefully someone else was able to go for that drive. I actually thought the rest of our drive would be fairly level around the coastal road and it surprised me with many hills. So even though we didn’t see the view from the top of the mountain, we had some high overlooks along the way.

Acadia provided beautiful views of the rocky seashore as well as the mountains. We mostly drove but I did walk along the cliffs in one section for awhile and found some good spots to climb down over some rocks for even better views. After quite a few hours in the park, we headed into Bar Harbor and planned on a late lunch there. Unfortunately, the streets were narrow and parking was limited. We didn’t find a place big enough to park our truck. Another place that I missed having the Mustang.

Since we couldn’t find a good spot to park, we just headed back towards Bangor and thought we would find a place to stop along the way. We pulled into one place that looked good but unfortunately, they were closed. After that, we thought we would just go back and try a place along the river, Eagle’s Nest, that a neighbor had suggested. It was a tiny place, probably no more than 8 tables and the food was great. A good ending to our day out.

The last day at Pumpkin Patch we ran into a neighbor, Renee, from the first park we stayed at in Florida. We hadn’t seen her in almost three years. Even though I had passed her a few times in the park while walking the dog, I didn’t recognize her. Tim realized it was her after we chatted with her the last evening there. Luckily we bumped into her before we left this morning and were able to catch up with her. What a small world. We knew that she spent the summer in Maine but didn’t know it was at that park. At least we were able to exchange phone numbers so hopefully we will keep in touch this time.

We are now back in Wells, ME for two nights and then we head over to Vermont for a few nights. I am going to miss being on the coast. We have enjoyed such beautiful views of the Atlantic coast on this trip. Hopefully we will find Vermont just as scenic. Look for an update next week.