Hiking and biking the Bold Coast

I finally found a place that offers beautiful recreation, but isn’t unbearably hot or overrun by tourists in the summer! Maine’s Bold Coast, north of Bar Harbor all the way to the Canadian border, offers stunning natural beauty, opportunities to hike, bike, and kayak, temps in the low 70s, and hardly another person in sight. Of course, there are also no decent restaurants, the hotels are sub-par and decent Airbnbs are few, and there is little to do if the weather is bad, but all of that is worth it just to escape the vacationing summer hordes!

I based out of Beals Island - not much to write home about, actually, but I did find one beautiful, solitary hike toward evening at Seaduck Point Preserve.

Beautiful hike at Boot Head Preserve, just south of Lubec - not a single person on the trail, even on a beautiful Sunday morning in August.

Hiking the Cutler Coast Preserve also yielded gorgeous views, although the trail was more crowded and not as well maintained. It took much longer to reach the viewpoints, and the hike along the coast would have taken hours, due ot the narrow paths and the difficult footing (tree roots and rocks everywhere).

Bold Coast bays and inlets - the tidal change was dramatic, completely emptying the entire bay during low tide, and then fully filling it back up by high tide.

The highlight of the trip was biking Schoodic Loop Road, out to Schoodic Point. The one-way, mostly level road makes for great biking, and this portion of Acadia National Park was almost deserted on a Monday morning.