10 years ago my wife and I had taken a 2 week road trip through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Maine. During that trip we stayed at Fundy National Park in a Yurt. And we definitely wanted to come back.
In 10 years, a bunch of things changed, and a bunch stayed the same. we did this trip in our Subaru Outback which was only a year old last time, and ended up exactly the same Yurt as last time. But we're now a family of 3, and I've been involved in climate organizing with Citizens Climate Lobby for the last 6 years. That meant that everything I saw now was through climate colored glasses. Some things really surprised me during the trip, and got me excited. This will be a multi part piece to keep things bite sized.
Parking in Bar Harbor
I've been to Bar Harbor and Acadia twice before (1999 and 2014), and one memory I've got is the cars and the parking are a mess. That had generally turned me off of it as a town.
Our first day in town was a Puffin Tour departing at 9:30am. We had a ~2 mile walk into town from the Hotel, which we did instead of trying to figure out parking. As we walked past the various parking meters it was clear I'd need to install yet another app (I'm now up to 7 parking apps on my phone), and it would run at least $4/hr ($6/hr closer in). Plus finding parking. I did not look forward to this. But at least I didn't have my car now.
The Puffin tour was awesome. That's a whole other post. But here is my favorite shot.
Bar Harbor has a bus network
After the morning puffin tour, and afternoon walking around, our legs were tired. It was close to 2 miles back to the hotel. But I kept seeing these buses go around. I wondered how they worked. Google to the rescue.
Look at that glorious bus route map!
The Island Explorer is a free bus network on Desert Island. It serves both Acadia National Park, as well as the larger parts of Bar Harbor. From where our hotel was to the village green there was a bus every 15 minutes until 10pm. There were buses every 30 minutes through large parts of the park. They are propane instead of diesel, which means they are far less polluting (hopefully the next round will upgrade to electric).
Thanks LL Bean for helping drive public transit!
Once we figured out this bus network, we were sold. And basically didn't use our car for most of the time in Bar Harbor. All excursions into Acadia were by Bus.
The bus network serves a ton of purposes. First off, it gets a bunch of cars out of the down town with the 15 minute bus to the nearby hotels (8 of them, stopping at their door, 30 minutes for the full loop). To me this immediately changed my ability to relax, because nothing stresses me out quite like trying to find parking. We were so free on this vacation by being able to leave the car at our hotel.
The bus network equally keeps cars out of the park, which has plenty of traffic and parking challenges of it's own.
It also lets you do more interesting hikes. Because you don't have to do loops, you can hike from one bus stop to the next, pick up the bus and go home. We didn't take advantage of that on this trip, but I can totally see doing that in the future.
The buses also have bike racks on the front and back, so they can take about 6 bikes with each one as well. Acadia has this massive carriage road network for biking, so a future trip is definitely going to include our bikes for that.
Bus Network as Destination Feature
Yes, Bar Harbor is a tourist town, with tourist money coming in. The buses are paid for from a combo of Acadia pass fees and LL Bean sponsorship.
But here is the thing, the Bus Network makes Bar Harbor a better place to vacation. A more relaxing one. One where I want to go back and spend another week because of the freedom those buses give me. I'm already planning our next trip.
And it turns out, we don't only need to have nice things on vacation. We could do this, have more buses, right at home. And eliminate a lot of driving and parking in the process.