Winter Weekend In Acadia

 

 

This past weekend Greg, Steven, Ryan and I went up to Acadia to see what the place is like in the winter. We arrived 2 minutes shy of midnight Friday night and camped at the closed Blackwoods campground for free all weekend. We had the place pretty much to ourselves. I mean the whole place. The campground, the trails, the town. Not many people around this time of year, or at least not this weekend. Only a coule other campers in the usually packed full 300 site campground, I think we only saw 4 other hikers on the mountains and a few other diners in town. Lots of bare rock, mild temps near 40, some snow below treeline and ice here and there kept things interesting for the hike.

The weather wasn't great, but could have been much worse also. Mostly just overcast on the hike, then sleet and rain for a few hours followed by snow and wind overnight, but only a couple inches of the stuff. That was much better than the 10 they were calling for as we ate dinner in the ghost town of Bar Harbor. Geddy's was about the only thing open, but it had good food and a nice atmosphere as well as cold drinks. What more could you ask for? After dinner we each hauled a bundle of wood the 1/2 mile to our campsite from the road and had a great fire with a few more drinks as the wind and snow howled around us.

The next morning was very windy with a lot of blowing snow, so after a trip along the few miles of Ocean Drive that are actually open in winter (untreated and slippery with black ice, but open) we took route 1 to Brunswick and the speed reduced to 45mph I-95 home from there, with a stop at Famous Daves to break up the 7 hour drive and a visit to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge along the way too. All in all it was a great weekend. With better weather we would have hiked Sunday too but that wasn't meant to be. Just another reason to go back again sometime.

For now, to see pictures from this trip you can click right here. Since it was an entire wekend there's a lot of them, but if you've ever wondered like I have what the place is like in the winter, feel free to click your way through a winter trip to Acadia.