The gift of Acadia National Park for the holidays

For the fan of Acadia National Park on your holiday shopping list: How about a membership to Friends of Acadia; a purchase from eParks®, The Official Online Store of America’s National Parks®; an annual park pass; or any number of other Acadia- or national-park-themed gifts?

Acadia National Park annual pass is $20, half off this year’s price, if purchased in December. The pass, good for 12 months from date of purchase, is proposed to go to $50 in 2015. (NPS photo)

There’s no need to fight the crowds at a shopping mall with any of these ideas for the holidays, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. Plus you get the convenience of our doing some of the legwork for you with our research and links, and the satisfaction of knowing that some of your purchases may help support the park, certain non-profits and area businesses.

Here are gift ideas broken down by category:

Support the park directly or indirectly
– Annual Acadia National Park pass – If you buy the pass in December, the cost is $20, or half off this year’s price. The discounted annual pass is available at the park headquarters and winter visitor center on Eagle Lake Road, open daily in December from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The discounted pass is also available Friday Dec. 5 at the Village Green park information center, during the Bar Harbor Midnight Madness Sale, from 8 p.m. until midnight. The fee for the annual pass is proposed to go up to $50 in 2015, while the 7-day pass is proposed to increase from $20 to $25. A public meeting to discuss these and other proposed fee increases, the first since 2004, was held Nov. 12. The park is taking public comments on the proposed fee increases via e-mail or US mail through Dec. 8. The increased revenue would allow the park to enhance services for the upcoming Acadia Centennial in 2016, according to the park service.

Part of the America’s National Park Series, this comes as either a pin or a magnet in this design, at eParks(R). See holiday sale details in sidebar. (Photo courtesy of eParks(R))

– Shop at eParks® – The online store for Eastern National, a nonprofit founded by park rangers to help support national parks, is offering special holiday discounts of 25% to 35%, plus free shipping on orders of $25 and up. Eastern National runs the bookstore at the seasonal Hulls Cove Visitor Center at Acadia, and also offers a virtual Acadia shop at eParks®. See sale details and links to eParks® in the sidebar and throughout this blog post. eParks® is an affiliated partner of Acadia on My Mind. A certain percentage of some purchases made via click-throughs from this Web site helps cover costs of this blog, but prices are no more than if you went directly to eParks®, and possibly less with special affiliated partner codes. Since 1947, Eastern National has donated more than $107 million to national parks and other federal sites, from Maine to South Dakota.

Get a potential tax deduction for the gift

As part of “Giving Tuesday” on Dec. 2, you can donate to Friends of Acadia and “vote” for one of 6 iconic park sites, by clicking a button such as the one pictured above. The active buttons can be found here. (Friends of Acadia image)

– Friends of Acadia membership – Whether you opt for the basic gift membership at the Sand Beach Society level of $40, or spring for the Pemetic Society level of $10,000, or any of the levels in between, the recipient gets a special mail delivery with a personalized gift card announcing your gift; a one-year subscription to the Friends of Acadia Journal; a package of 6 note cards with art photographs; and other benefits that normally come with the different levels of membership in the nonprofit. Or if you want to make a tax-deductible donation to the Friends of Acadia without buying a gift membership, you can do so as part of “Giving Tuesday”, a global alternative to “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” and a day to give back. The unique twist that Friends of Acadia is putting on “Giving Tuesday” on Dec. 2: You can “vote” for your favorite Acadia spot while giving, whether it’s Sand Beach or Schoodic Point, with the winning spot to be announced on Dec. 3.
– Tribute gift to Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park – The nonprofit institute, which provides environmental research and education, can notify the person you’re honoring with the gift. Among the many programs offered by the institute: The popular Hawk Watch, which attracted 4,100 visitors and counted 2,605 migrating raptors this year, and is a collaboration with the park’s interpretive division.

Help plan the next trip to Acadia
– Gift check from Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce – Available in $25 denominations, with a $1 per check handling charge, the gift checks are accepted by more than 80 participating chamber members, including places to stay like the Atlantic Oceanside and Bar Harbor Inn, restaurants like Jordan’s and Galyn’s, and tourist services like Acadia Shops and Bark Harbor.

The National Parks edition of Monopoly(R), regular price of $42.95 on eParks(R). (Photo courtesy of eParks(R))

– Acadia books, maps and DVDs – Available online through our affiliated partners eParks® or Amazon.com, see links in the sidebar. As mentioned above, eParks® is offering holiday discounts and free shipping on certain orders. Amazon offers low prices year-round, with free shipping for Amazon Prime members or orders over $35. As with the eParks® partnership, if you click through any of the Amazon links in the sidebar, a certain percentage of any orders placed helps cover the costs of this blog, but prices are the same as if you went directly to Amazon yourself. For your shopping convenience, “Acadia National Park” is pre-populated in the Amazon search field in the sidebar, but any item can be searched for. From time to time we’ll highlight some Acadia- or national-park-themed items, since there are gift-buying occasions throughout the year, not just around the holidays.

QT Luong and Acadia National Park fall foliage

View of Porcupine Islands from Cadillac Mountain in fall color. This is just one of the many fine art prints you can buy at 25% off during a holiday sale, with each hand signed by noted national parks photographer QT Luong. (Photo by QT Luong/terragalleria.com all rights reserved)

Buy an autographed Acadia photograph or hiking book
– 25% holiday sale off limited-edition fine art photographs – Noted photographer QT Luong hand signs each print, whether it’s of Acadia, any of the other 58 national parks or other subjects. The discount is good for any print order placed before the end of the year. Unframed prints ordered for US delivery before Dec. 20 are scheduled to arrive by Christmas. Shipping is free worldwide. Luong was featured in Ken Burns’s “National Parks: America’s Best Idea” as the first to photograph all the national parks in large format, and we’ve featured him and some of his Acadia photographs in this blog.
– 25% of hiking book proceeds to benefit Friends of Acadia – We have a limited number of autographed copies available of our “Hiking Acadia National Park” and “Best Easy Day Hikes, Acadia National Park” books, which can be personally inscribed if you’d like. The big book features color photographs and 77 hikes, from easy to most difficult, on Mount Desert Island, Schoodic Peninsula and Isle au Haut. The Friends of Acadia Journal called the big book an “excellent hiking guide, written by two true Acadia trail aficionados,” that can “assist anyone setting out on their first (or hundred-and-first) hike in Acadia.” We have 9 of those books available at the cover price of $21.95 plus shipping and handling. The thinner volume of easy day hikes is about to be updated in a third edition, available next spring. There isn’t much difference between the second and third editions, except for the inclusion of two new Otter Creek trails and a couple of new Island Explorer bus stops, and a higher price. We have 19 of the second edition available at the cover price of $9.95 plus shipping and handling (the third edition of “Best Easy” is slated to have a cover price of $12.95). The donation of 25% of proceeds to the Friends of Acadia is available only on books purchased directly from us at the below PayPal links, until supplies last. Of course, you can buy the books at lower cost through Amazon, but they won’t be autographed and there’s no donation to the Friends of Acadia that way – unless you donate the difference in price yourself, that is! If you have any questions, you can contact us by private message at www.facebook.com/acadiaonmymind, or through the About us section of this blog. Shipments will be by Priority Mail.

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