It’s 4:45 a.m. as we drive the curvy road to the summit of Cadillac Mountain and I am dubious about this “must-do” experience. If you go to Acadia National Park, it’s imperative, everyone and every guidebook says, that you witness sunrise here. Cadillac is the spot where the sun first hits the continental United States. This mountain, at just 1,530 feet, is described by the National Park Service as “the tallest mountain along the eastern coast of the United States.”
It hardly even qualifies as a mountain, I say, clearing sleep from my eyes. More like a hill, really. A shower would have startled me into alertness and perhaps washed away the grouchies, but we couldn’t risk missing that wow moment by my primping.
I blink twice as we negotiate the final turn into the parking lot. Am I going to have to hunt for a parking place? Lots of people beat us here. Teenagers in pajamas, some of whom have pulled up a piece of granite and gone back to sleep. Photographers attempting to position tripods on not-so-level ground. Wee children whose hands are held tightly by parents. Lovers of all ages.
Car parked, I find a perch to wait and watch. OK, dazzle me. The sky is already pink, wispy clouds framing the view. Below is Bar Harbor and Frenchman Bay with its small islands, the Porcupines among them.
The sun first appears as a flat line, interrupting the dark horizon facing northeast toward Canada like a punctuation mark, a hyphen or maybe a long dash. Within seconds, the brightness forces me to look away and in minutes the sun is up, its light dancing on the water below. The crowd, which was already quiet or maybe sleeping, is more still now, bathed in brilliant orange and yellow. The tableau is breathtaking, well worth the early alarm. We’ve had a communion with nature, all 300 of us.
It’s 5:10 a.m. Now what?
The 49,000 acres of Acadia National Park stretch across Mount Desert Island and some nearby smaller islands in patches. Locals pronounce it “dessert” like the sweet meal-ender, not the sandy, arid land. It’s about 50 miles south of Bangor and 160 miles northeast of Portland. Around these parts they refer to this portion of the Maine Coast, from Penobscot Bay to Canada, as “Down East.”
The park is intertwined with seaside towns whose full-time residents seem to have a love-hate relationship with summer. The best weather of a year marked by brutal weather is shared with hordes of tourists. They flock Down East, spending a lot of money, which is good, but they also clog the roads and create lines for everything, not so good. The lure of lobster, chowder and ice cream, plus spectacular scenery, is impossible to resist.
Inside the park, the summer crowds disperse somewhat and it’s easier to find solitary moments. Acadia is a haven for bicyclists, hikers, campers and kayakers. We are none of those things, but still enjoy the rugged and cool Maine coast. There are self-guided walks around Jordan Pond in the interior of the park (with the promise afterward of popovers and strawberry jam at the adjacent restaurant after the 3.3-mile shoreline adventure) and other sights to see along the rolling footpath that skirts the craggy coast to Otter Cliff. I fend off mosquitoes while watching the water crash up through Thunder Hole with not a soul in sight. The scent of fuchsia beach roses makes the bugs bearable.
Beyond the park, the area’s biggest draw is Bar Harbor with its tangle of souvenir shops, global bazaars, upscale kitchen emporiums, art galleries and restaurants. A village green is a lovely spot to sit and people watch. There’s a cruise port here, which dumps thousands of people into town between April and October. Smaller boats offer short sightseeing excursions, providing a view from another angle and an opportunity to see wildlife. We take a cruise on the four-masted schooner Margaret Todd, and a bald eagle soars overhead just a few minutes out of the dock. How lucky is that?
