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.