As we left Cincinnati, we we’re already dreading the amount of driving ahead of us before the next flagship stop – Acadia National Park in northeastern Maine. This is roughly an 18hr drive straight, but we decided to break it up a bit and stop a night each in Buffalo and Burlington along the way making an even longer trip, but even more filled with peeping.

The trip to Buffalo was relatively uneventful and the day quite long, so there wasn’t much we did in the area. As we quickly found out, NY (and much of the northeast to be fair) has interstates that are grandfathered toll roads since the toll road existed before Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act in ’56 – cool… This wasn’t that much of a pain until leaving Buffalo, where the difference in time to Burlington was 2hrs of driving if we didn’t take the toll. So we did, and we still have no clue how much we were actually charged – cool, cool. On the way there though, we had a great breakfast stop where Rachel took an incredible picture of me. Despite my appearance, I did not in fact sample the local marijuana wares…

Thankfully the drive was relatively uneventful and we got to Burlington just in time to have a nice dinner at Foam Brewers, where the sour beers are awesome! For any of the Texas readers, the brews were very reminiscent of Jester King beers, and they also did some funky wines that we didn’t try but sounded pretty good.

The next morning we left Burlington and decided to make a few stops along the way to Acadia since we ‘only’ had a 5hr drive ahead of us. We start off at Cabot Creamery just outside of town, getting some of the best fresh cheese curds we’ve had. When you’re in Vermont, you also have to make a stop at Ben & Jerry’s, which was thankfully just a few minutes away from Cabot. While we didn’t do the tour of the creamery, the Flavor Graveyard was a pretty interesting little tour – thankfully Cherry Garcia won’t be here anytime soon!

Next on our detour list was an apple orchard – this was a must have stop for Rachel, where she wanted to embrace her falliest self with an apple cider donut and a hot apple cider. Based on the 2nd picture below, I’d say mission accomplished! The final detour was driving through Kancamagus Pass in New Hampshire – this was recommended to us by some Bostonians, and it was indeed a very pretty drive. However with an overcast and some construction having us stopped for more than half an hour, I wouldn’t say it was the most important thing to add to the itinerary.

Finally, we made it to Acadia National Park and boy were we not prepared… The first thing we did was drive into Bay Harbor, a town completely contained in the national park, for dinner. What we found was a general tourist trap with seemingly 50% of the population of Massachusetts and New York all choosing to visit at the same time as us. Food was meh (and more expensive that California…), and we quickly made our way over to the campsite for the night.

Thankfully, the next day where we decided to do a few hikes was a much better experience and we had a chance to peep some more, see some gorgeous coastal views and wait in line for an hour to see an underwhelming lighthouse. This is all to say, Acadia is definitely a nice area, but one that made me scratch my head as to why it’s a National Park to begin with… it seems like any part of the Maine coast could’ve replaced Acadia as the park of choice. Maybe it’s the comparison with the western parks that have some of the most majestic areas in the world, or maybe it truly is just mid, but this led me to think of Acadia as the most okayish National Park we’ve been to (so far at least).

Now off to Boston!