• See the Puffins
    See the Puffins
    “Puffins are important because of hope,” says Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. naturalist Hugo Navarro. “They are proof that extinction can be reversed.”
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  • Learn to fly
    Learn to fly
    “Being a flight instructor, one of the things is you usually end up making lifelong friends,” he said. “I have friends from way back from the 1980s that I’m still friends with. You make a lot of contacts with people on the way.”
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  • Take a train ride
    Take a train ride
    “You're really selling the experience versus the service,” Fernald reflected. “People rode passenger trains because they had to get from one place to another, and then as time went by and things changed … those things kind of started to go away. And so, to preserve this stuff so that other people can appreciate what things were like — that’s kind of what this is all about.”
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  • Visit an historic fort
    Visit an historic fort
    At the tower’s base, visitors take an elevator that whisks them 420 feet in the air in 48 seconds.
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  • Haul lobster traps with Linda Greenlaw
    Haul lobster traps with Linda Greenlaw
    Greenlaw, who also sword fished for years and has been featured on the Discovery Network’s “Swords: Life on the Line” program, is offering night cruises, too. Aboard a Wesmac yacht named Select, the two-hour cruises will feature an astronomer who will give passengers a tour of the night sky.
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  • Take a carving class
    Take a carving class
    “There’s just so many things to learn about birds. In one lifetime you couldn’t begin to grasp it,” bird carver Wendell Gilley explains in a video featured on the website of the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor.
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Explore
Maine's natural beauty
Savor
Tastes of sea and land
Enjoy
A lively arts scene
Maine's natural beauty
Tastes of sea and land
A lively arts scene
Plan your visit today

Over two million visitors flock to Acadia National Park each year. The region's natural beauty does not stop at the park's boundaries, however. There are many vibrant communities and attractions within a half-day's drive. Check out all Downeast Maine has to offer.

Recent Posts

For 25 years, Polly and her husband, Levon, have owned and operated their walk-up or dine-in seafood restaurant on Route 1 in Sullivan.

Twenty years ago, David Thompson and Matthew Strong flew separately down to South America. The two Mainers were on a mission to salvage a Swedish Ericsson AGF500 telephone switching system from a telephone company in Peru. The system is a highlight of The Telephone Museum in Ellsworth.

Bad Little Brewing Co.’s co-owners Sean Lent and Kathryn Toppan combined Sean’s microbrewery and their restaurant in Machias’s historic Clark Perry House.

Boyce’s Motel is multi-generation, family-run inn in Stonington. Proprietor Barrett Gray’s maternal great-grandmother, Mae Boyce, and his grandparents, George and Barbara Boyce, opened the silver-shingled inn in 1961.

Rebecca and Michael Daugherty run Sea Kayak Stonington. The couple leads tours among the archipelago of islands and beyond from this largely commercial fishing port on the southern end of Deer Isle.

Waves erupt in white foam at the base of Acadia National Park’s Otter Cliffs. Hanging on the immense rock wall is Leah Taylor. The Waldo […]

Wading through waist-high grasses swaying in the breeze, Jesse Wheeler looks both concerned and delighted by the variety of plants around him. Acadia National Park’s […]

“99.9 percent of people are happy, maybe one in a thousand is a little grumpy” says owner Bill Coggins, referring to the fudge at Ben […]