Day 1:
We decided to just drive up to Portland and stay there on Saturday night for a few reasons. The most obvious being that it breaks up the 5 hour drive up to Acadia, and the second is that Maria had never been to Maine, let alone Portland! We didn't see a ton but we did go to the main street area, grabbed some beers at the only (of their many) breweries/brewpubs that was still open, Sebago Brewing Company's Portland Brewpub, had a light snack of hummus because we were STARVING, and then headed over to one of the most popular restaurants in Portland, Duckfat. This place specializes in delicious food. Oh, you need more of an explanation than that? They specialize in Belgian fries made from local Maine potatoes fried in, you guessed it, duck fat. Oh, they were heavenly! We ordered the poutine with an egg on top, and then had the doughnut holes (now do you see why we ordered hummus and veggies at the last place?). YUM. Go there if you head to Portland. Afterwards we checked into our hotel in Westport, a Super 8, which was perfect for a budget hotel, and then went to sleep.
Day 2:
We woke up, got dressed, ate some continental breakfast (it's not a good budget place if it doesn't have continental breakfast), and hit the road! We had about a 3- 3 1/2 drive up to Mount Desert (pronounced Dessert) Island where Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor are located. Just before we got to Mount Desert, we saw an L.L. Bean Outlet store and stopped real fast, but unfortunately (or fortunately for my bank account) didn't find anything.
Finally, we arrived in Bar Harbor and were quite hungry so we decided to stop at a place we saw on the map that looked like it was right next to a brewery, called Mainely Meat BBQ. We missed the turn, however and so decided to drive a little further to Echo Lake, which I'm pretty sure is the place my dad told me about. It has a natural sand beach, but it's inland and just on a lake. It was very pretty and the water was perfect. Too bad we didn't have a ton of time or our bathing suits. Darn! We also didn't know if we should be there without a pass to Acadia (although we did not see any signs for entrances on this side of the island), so we left and tried for a second time to find Mainely Meat (we were hungry!). We found it this time around, yay! It just so happened that Mainely Meat is owned by the brewery we were looking for, Atlantic Brewing Company. How perfect! We sat down outside for some good ole' BBQ-I got the pulled pork as always, and perused the beer menu. The waitress came and asked for our ID's and it was at this time that I started to panic. I couldn't find it anywhere in my purse, I went back to the car and didn't see it there, and finally I remembered that to check-in to the hotel last night, I gave the clerk at the desk my ID. I called the Super 8 and thankfully it was back in Portland, only problem was that I couldn't drink any beer at this brewery. Do you know how hard that is to hear when you love craft beer as much as I do? It was sobering (literally). Oh well, the food was great and we at least were quicker at hitting the road to see more of the park on this gorgeous day!
We drove back around to the main part of Bar Harbor and saw the signs for entrances to Acadia. We grabbed a park entrance pass for $25 (I think it might have been more for the holiday season) and hit the Park Loop Road. The Park Loop Road is the main way to see Acadia as it loops around and hits all of the main sights. Our first stop was Sand Beach. This was GORGEOUS! When I think of beaches, I think of long miles of beach and the open ocean. Well, sand beach is this little inlet off the coast and therefore is almost totally surrounded by land. Land that is full of rocks and very green trees and it's just beautiful. Plus, for some reason that I don't understand the water is incredibly blue and almost turquoise like you see in places in the Caribbean. Awesome! This water, however, was freezing-so no swimming here even if we wanted to!
In the morning, we woke up and got ready, checked out of our motel and then headed back into Bar Harbor for breakfast at a spot that was recommended: 2 Cats. It was tasty! We had a little bit of time left to walk around Bar Harbor, the main street area with all of it's shops was really cute! I am proud to say that even though they had some EXTREMELY cute tops, I didn't buy any :) But.....we did buy the blueberry with lemon icing whoopie pie, whoops (haha!). Maine is known for their wild blueberries, AND their whoopie pies, so we had to. We didn't have enough time to walk all the way across, but we did walk down to the sand bar to Bar Island. During low-tide, one can walk across the sand bar to the island instead of during high-tide, taking a boat or something. Kind-of neat! We walked back towards the car and made one last stop to...the ice cream shop. We are horrible. This place had a huge line last night and Maria really wanted the Wild Maine Blueberry Sorbet, which I sampled and was amazing. I don't remember what I ate, but it tasted good as I don't have ice cream too often.
After we were stuffed with sweets (oh wait, we hadn't eaten the whoopie pie yet, whew I feel better), we started the long trek back to Portland (to grab my ID) and then to Boston. And it was LONG. We caught some major traffic due to an accident and it took us an extra 1 1/2 to 2 hours, ugh! Oh well, we arrived safely home after a nice little trip Downeast :)