Seaside Path in Acadia

 

My wife and I had made reservations to go on a 16-day bus trip in the summer of 2020. The trip included touring several national parks out west (Glacier, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, etc.) as well as local sites, such as museums and the Black Hills, and crossing into Canada for the Calgary Stampede and touring Banff National Park. 

The pandemic, combined with the closure of the Canadian border led to the cancellation of our trip. Travel restrictions imposed by the State of Vermont, which varied week to week in response to the pandemic in the moment, made planning any getaway challenging.

Generally, vacations with my wife have been to Maine; either to Acadia or Freeport, or sometimes both. We decided to try to plan a trip to Acadia, and hoped that Hancock County, where Acadia was located, would be green on the Travel Map that the State updated every week.

In addition to the Travel Map, the success of our trip relied upon careful planning. Having lived on Mount Desert Island as a child, and having returned there over thirty times in the last 50 years, I am very familiar with places to go, including places where there won't be crowds. We have been coming to MDI in October for the past 25+ years and, even though the number of tourists has increased over the years, it is still not as bad as in July or August. 

We also generally rent a house for a week, rather than staying in a hotel. For this trip, we found an Airbnb, which was a ranch house about 150 yards from my childhood home in Southwest Harbor. The advantage with this choice was, if the pandemic got worse, we could cancel and get a refund with 48 hours notice.

We also created a list of places we could see and hike which were unlikely to be overflowing with tourists. One of them was the Seaside Path.

If you look at tourist maps of hiking trails on Mount Desert Island, you will not find the Seaside Path. Much of it is on private property, but the owners give permission for hikers to cross their land. The path starts near Jordan Pond, passes through evergreen forest;

past a private stable;

beneath the Stanley Brook Bridge:

and eventually ends up on the beach at Seal Harbor for a picnic lunch.

Originally, the path connected the Seaside Inn in Seal Harbor with the Jordan Pond House. The Seaside Inn is long gone, the original Jordan Pond House burned down in 1979 (replaced by the current version). At one time, the path also served as a buckboard road. Today, the path is well-maintained, though little used (we saw one jogger on the trail during our walk to Seal Harbor and back).

My wife and I are trying to be optimistic, and have a reservation to rent a house on the shore in October, 2021. Hopefully between the vaccine, changes in Washington, and at least most of us behaving responsibly, the world will be a better place by then. One can only hope.