Touching down at Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Bar Harbor places you close to cities like Ellsworth, Bangor, and Belfast, all easily reachable. Bar Harbor is the lively gateway town for Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, with a harborfront of lobster shacks, ice cream windows, and inns, and granite peaks rising right behind Main Street. The feel is classic coastal Maine, busy in summer, quiet and crisp in the shoulder seasons, and surrounded by trails and tidepools.

Standout experiences around Bar Harbor: - Drive or hike up Cadillac Mountain for the first sunrise in the United States - Loop the Park Loop Road past Thunder Hole, Sand Beach, and Otter Cliffs - Eat popovers with jam on the lawn at the Jordan Pond House - Bike the carriage roads built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. around Eagle Lake - Walk the Shore Path along the harbor and cross to Bar Island at low tide - Take a whale watching or puffin cruise from the town pier - Visit the Abbe Museum for Wabanaki history and art - Crack a lobster at a dockside pound in Southwest Harbor or Trenton

Bar Harbor sits on an island linked to the mainland by a short bridge, so the rest of Downeast Maine is close. Ellsworth is 20 minutes away, the Schoodic Peninsula section of Acadia is about an hour, Bangor is about an hour northwest, and Belfast and the midcoast are roughly 90 minutes. Blueberry pie is the dessert of record, and the Fourth of July lobster races and seafood festival draw a crowd. Come in September for warm days, thin crowds, and the first hint of fall color.