Acadia National Park, Maine

We finally got to our first major national park!! Acadia was absolutely gorgeous. It's on a mountainous island off the coast of Maine. What that means for Acadia is that you have a lot of mountains rising up out of a lot of forms of water, which makes for some spectacular views and great hikes. We were only there for a couple of days, so the only true hikes we did were Jordan Pond loop, the Bar Harbor tidal island hike, and the South Bubble Mountain hike, all of which were beautiful. The Bar Harbor island hike is one that you can only do at low tide, as the path to the island is submerged at any other time. Jordan Pond hike was peaceful and lovely, but South Bubble was our favorite- we loved hiking to the top of the mountain and seeing the mountains, lakes, and ocean all around us!

Some of the other things we got to do were take a drive through the whole park, explore Cadillac mountain (twice- once during the day, and once for the sunrise. During the fall and winter, the top of Cadillac is the first place in the US to see the sunrise!), saw Thunder Hole and clambered around on the cliffs, swam in Echo Lake (coooold!), walked down Sand Beach, looked for peregrine falcons at Precipice cliff, and walked down to Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.

And since we're in Maine, there's also a lot of lobster! We got 4 dishes with lobster in it- including Paula Deen's favorite lobster mac and cheese, my first lobster roll, and whole boiled lobsters twice. We learned our lesson after the first time and, instead of paying $25 for one lobster with butter, just went to the grocery, paid $12 per lobster including them cooking it for us, and cooked ourselves some corn and potatoes in old bay seasoning real quick. Pro tip to everyone else, that's the way to go!

Finally, if nothing else, go to Acadia for the stars. I've been to some remote places, but I've never seen so many stars in my life. Seeing the band of the Milky Way wasn't a challenge, it was practically the brightest thing in the sky. We saw shooting stars nearly every time we looked up. We were lucky enough to get two perfectly clear nights, and I could have stayed out there for hours.Read more