First stop – Cold Spring for Labor Day
September started off with something to look forward to: a small vacation! After a four-day work week, we were off to Cold Spring for a Labor Day weekend with a couple of friends (all of which tested COVID negative before getting together). It was more of a coincidence that we were part of this weekend trip. When visiting Vlad the other night he mentioned that he and a couple of colleagues / friends working at Google rented a huge mansion Upstate. They were looking to add some people to the group that would fit in well. This is when Vlad thought about us and we didn’t hesitate for a second to say “Yes”.
We arrived Thursday night and spent most of our time hanging out by the pool, playing some basketball on the court, exploring the town, enjoying the sun and playing with the cutest dog, Gaya. One particular highlight was the food. Most of the friends are originally from Italy and were super into home cooking. Every night was a feast with awesome Italian-inspired dishes. It was exactly what we needed after some pretty exhausting work weeks. After only four days it felt like we made some new friends. Time flew buy.
Next stop – Bar Harbor, Maine
Luckily, this was just the pre-event of our actual vacation. On Tuesday we left for Acadia National Park. We left early in the morning and decided to take historic Route 1 instead of the four-lane highway. This made the trip slightly longer but supposedly Route 1 is the prettiest road up the East Coast. The extra time was well worth it. On the way we stopped for a classic diner breakfast in Worcester, but besides that pretty much drove up the 8 hours in one go.
After we arrived and settled into our hotel in the late afternoon, we spent the rest of the day exploring Bar Harbor and had dinner at Testa´s, which was a recommendation of our friend Kushal. He did the very same trip just a couple of weeks earlier. Alex had a classic lobster roll and Franzi had some fresh halibut. The lobster roll was waaay better than the one we had in the Hamptons the month before.
Getting to know the park by car
The next day, we started with a drive around the Park Loop Road. This lets you basically see all the key “attractions” and provides a good overview of the park. Despite the park being relatively small (49,075 acres (76.7 sq mi; 198.6 km2), the park has quite something to offer: It contains the tallest mountain on the Atlantic Coast of the United States called Cadillac Mountain, lakes, streams, wetlands, forests, meadows, and coastlines. Overall the park has a huge diversity of plants and animals. Weaved into this landscape is a historic carriage road system financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., but we come to that later.
Our first stop in the park was at the Wild Gardens of Acadia and the famous Thunder hole. This is a small inlet, naturally carved out of the rocks where the waves roll into. When the waves arrive in there, air and water are forced out like a clap of distant thunder – hence the name. For lunch, we drove back to Bar Harbor and had one of the best sandwiches of our lifes at Lunch. We put quite some research into finding a decent lunch spot and in the end we said to ourselves that someone who names his restaurant “Lunch”, must be confident for a reason. And yes, an absolute recommendation if you ever come here! Afterwards we had a drink in the front yard of the Ivy Manor Inn and enjoyed the sun.
For the afternoon we went back into the park and spent time walking the path around the Jordan Pond which was a very nice walk through the woods and along the pond. Day 1 was a success and we finished it with a dinner at the Side Street Cafe.
Taking a birds eye – hiking up some hills
On day 2, the weather was pretty miserable. This was the day we had booked a whale watching tour, but unfortunately it was cancelled due to fog 10 minutes before we were about to leave. Instead, we visited the Bass Harbor head lighthouse, which was quite mystical in the fog. Afterwards, Alex found a great trail to hike – the giant slide trail, which brought us through woods, stone slides and onto two summits. Overall, the day was great fun and our alternative activities made up for the bummer early in the morning. Now we have a reason to come back! In the evening, we rewarded ourselves with freshly drafted IPA, a burger and pulled pork Mac and Cheese at the Finback Ale House.
Exploring Acadia from the sea
For Friday, we booked something exciting: a sea kayak tour. We started from the Bartlett Narrows, had a snack break on Moose Island and then finished in Seal Cove. The weather was gorgeous and it was really nice and calming to explore nature from the water. The cool thing: The entire tour follows the current and is a one-way trip, which means you cover quite some distance without having to paddle against the current on the way back.
After a break, we decided to do some more hiking. We did the Beehive trail which was a lot of fun with good views. We also attempted to do the Precipe trail but realized after a bit that both time and energy were lacking to finish it. In addition, it was quite risky and we (especially Alex) didn’t feel very secure. To put it in simple terms, Alex was riding the “Struggle Bus”. Later in the day we drove up to the Blue Hill Overlook on Cadillac Mountain to watch the sunset, which was majestic. For dinner, we went to the Thirsty Whale Tavern and had some classic blackened cod. After dinner we met Marlene & Henrik for a drink. The day before we ran into Henrik by accident. We knew they were on a similar trip, but didn’t know that our calendars matched perfectly.
Bicycles to make sure we have seen everything
And again, time flew by. It was already our last day! After a fancy Acai bowl for breakfast, we rented some bicycles and toured almost all of the carriage roads mentioned above. They are basically motor-free byways which used to be utilized for horse carriages. After riding bikes all day and covering more than 24 miles (40km) we decided for a final fancy dinner at Galyn´s and had some delicious fresh Crab Cakes and Lobster Linguini.
On Sunday, we drove the way back to New York without a break to arrive in time for our rental car return around 2pm. Later that day we took a walk around Washington Square Park and ordered some food to round off this awesome trip (and because our fridge was empty). Overall, we liked the national park more and more the longer we stayed. It had just the right size for the time we spent there and we explored it from many different perspectives – by car, foot, bicycle and by sea. A wholehearted recommendation!
We also created a short video to capture some of the experience and make use of our GoPro – Enjoy!
