Tag Archives: friends-of-acadia

2016 Acadia Centennial makes for special holiday gift ideas

For the Acadia National Park fan on your list, or for a year-end charitable donation, the 2016 Acadia Centennial offers a once-in-a-century set of holiday gift ideas.

Acadia Centennial

This Acadia Centennial calendar, by ranger naturalist Bob Thayer, can be purchased directly through his photography Web site, at local businesses such as Sherman’s, or online at eParks(R). At least 5% of gross proceeds will go to Centennial efforts and other Acadia projects. (Image courtesy of Bob Thayer)

How about an official Acadia Centennial calendar, fleece blanket, magnet, embroidered patch or baseball cap? A 0.75L Camelbak bottle to commemorate the 100th anniversary? A handcrafted glazed stoneware mug? A stemless wine glass? A massage for the outdoor enthusiast on your list?

These and other items are produced or sold by official Acadia Centennial partners, who’ve promised to donate at least 5% of gross proceeds to support Centennial projects and other Acadia National Park efforts. A central list of products and services is on the Acadia Centennial Partners Web site, which provides links to where you can make purchases, whether through a local business or online. Not all officially sanctioned products or services may be on that site yet.

Or perhaps you’d rather make a potentially tax-deductible gift to benefit Acadia in the name of family members or friends, as your way of marking the Acadia Centennial? Here are some ways to do that:

Centennial logo for Acadia National Park

The official Acadia Centennial logo

  • Gift membership to Friends of Acadia – On Giving Tuesday, Dec. 1, the nonprofit world’s counterpoint to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Friends of Acadia hopes to add 100 new members. By giving a gift membership, you would not only help the nonprofit reach its 100-new-member goal, you’d also provide a year’s worth of membership benefits to a family member or friend, including a subscription to the Friends of Acadia Journal, six note cards depicting Acadia at night, and a window decal. A bargain with membership starting at $40.
  • A tribute gift to Friends of Acadia or Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park – Not limited to the holidays, such a gift can commemorate a birthday, anniversary or any other special occasion. Such a gift to the Friends of Acadia would be recognized in the Friends of Acadia Journal. The Schoodic Institute, which provides environmental research and education and such citizen science programs as HawkWatch, can notify the person you’re honoring with the gift.

Want more Centennial gift-giving options? 2016 is also the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, opening up other holiday gift ideas. Continue reading →

Spring blossoms, rhodora inspires, in Acadia National Park

For Jill Weber, consulting botanist for Acadia National Park, the flowers of spring bring a feast for the senses, and a desire to share the experience.

“One of the first plants that say spring is beaked hazelnut,” Weber said, with flowers that are “exquisite, magenta, threadlike structures that must be seen to be believed. Soon after we get mayflowers.”

rhodora in Acadia National Park

Rhodora along the Dorr North Ridge Trail.

Then there’s the rhodora, the occasional mountain sandwort, carpets of bluets, violets both white and blue, starflowers and pink Lady’s-slipper, to name just some. It’s late May, early June and the mountaintops and lowlands of Acadia National Park are brimming with spring flowers.

Of all the spring blossoms of Acadia, perhaps none are as adored as the rhodora.

“Its bloom time demands a hike up Dorr Mountain for a view of Great Meadow,” said Weber by e-mail, when asked by Acadia on My Mind to name the flowers that most mean spring for her. “The rhodora in the middle of the peatland forms a mosaic of colors with the unfurling leaves of each tree species providing a unique signature. It is a Monet painting come to life!”

Not only have scientists like Weber been inspired by the purple and pink rhodora, so have writers, photographers, Rusticators of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and even the first park superintendent, George B. Dorr, and his staff.

rhodora

Local photographer Vincent Lawrence captures the mass of rhodora pink along Great Meadow, with the spring green of Huguenot Head and Champlain as backdrop. He even has a blog post all about rhodora on his photography workshop Web site, entitled “Meet Rhodora”. (Photo courtesy of Acadia Images)

Perhaps it’s the profusion of color, the delicate flowers that last only a week or two, or that they grow in such different habitats as the peatland of Great Meadow and the seemingly barren summits of Dorr, Cadillac and Sargent Mountains, that make rhodora such a standout.

The flower can be found in bloom in the Wild Gardens of Acadia at the Sieur de Monts Spring area of the park, as well as along the Cadillac Summit Loop, Dorr North Ridge Trail and elsewhere, as we found during late spring hikes throughout the park. Continue reading →

New edition of Best Easy Day Hikes, Acadia National Park

UPDATE 4/3/15: Just learned of a way you can get a copy of “Best Easy Day Hikes, Acadia National Park” for free – by joining the American Hiking Society​ at the family level. FalconGuides, publisher of the guide, is one of AHS’s partners in its Families on Foot initiative, to encourage families, particularly those with kids, to hike.

Officially published today, April 1, and Amazon.com is already selling our new third edition fast! Only 15 copies of “Best Easy Day Hikes, Acadia National Park” in stock as of this morning, and more will be on the way.

(See sidebar for note about Amazon.com links in this blog. The book is also available for purchase online at www.barnesandnoble.com and elsewhere. And it should also be available in Bar Harbor at Sherman’s Bookstore and at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center when it opens up for the season.)

Continue reading →

New Year’s resolutions with an Acadia National Park twist

So you didn’t hike up Cadillac Mountain to catch the first US sunrise of 2015? Don’t worry, there are plenty of other New Year’s resolutions with an Acadia National Park angle, and many more days left in the year to accomplish them.

Cadillac Mountain double rainbow

If getting fit is one of your New Year’s resolutions, consider hiking up Cadillac Mountain rather than driving up it. You may see a double rainbow, even if you didn’t catch the first US sunrise of 2015.

Whether you resolve to get fit, give back, spend quality time with family, or cross something off your bucket list, we’ve rounded up some Acadia themes to motivate you for the New Year.

Get fit

– Hike Acadia’s trails or peaks – Maybe you’re not as obsessed as Darron Collins, president of the College of the Atlantic, who recently tweeted a graphic showing he’d hiked Acadia’s peaks a total of 250 times, covering 1,000 miles, as part of his 2014 New Year’s resolutions. The tweet was then shared by Chimani, the hiking app, on its Facebook page.

Acadia National Park collectible patch

If you want to mark your peakbagging, consider this patch from the Hulls Cove Visitor Center bookstore. We’ll be adding this to our daypack, to go along with patches from climbing the 150+ highest Northeast peaks, from Washington to Katahdin, Marcy to Mansfield.

Or maybe you’re not as goal-oriented in your hiking as we are, having scaled not only all of Acadia’s summits, but also the Northeast’s highest mountains, with framed certificates on display and peakbagging patches on our daypack to mark the feats.

However you want to incorporate hiking into your 2015 fitness goals, or however you want to mark the accomplishment, there’s an Acadia theme to get you going.

Want to climb mountains? The park service used to have a prominent list of 26 peaks of Acadia on its Web site; we saw it most recently at the Cadillac summit gift shop and have memorialized it on a blog page, The 26 peaks of Acadia National Park. As a College of the Atlantic fundraiser in 2012, Collins and others hiked what they called 28 peaks in 24 hours.

Want to hike easy or moderate trails? Out of the more than 120 miles of hiking trails, there are plenty that fit that bill, as we document in our book, “Best Easy Day Hikes, Acadia National Park,” see link to it on Amazon.com in the sidebar. The more difficult trails, including cliff climbs, are in “Hiking Acadia National Park,” link also in the sidebar. Continue reading →

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

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.

Acadia magnet

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.

Continue reading →

Taking pride in being volunteers of Acadia National Park

Neither rain nor temperatures in the 40s could keep hundreds of volunteers from fanning across Acadia National Park’s carriage roads Saturday, to rake leaves and clear drainage ditches, and help protect against winter’s erosion.

Take Pride in Acadia Day

Some of the hundreds of volunteers during a sunnier Take Pride in Acadia Day in 2011. (NPS Photo / D.R. Hunt)

A rite of fall for 23 years, the Friends of Acadia’s Take Pride in Acadia Day is considered one of the most important volunteer efforts in the Maine national park, held the first Saturday every November. By preventing the damage of freeze-thaw cycles, the effort helps maintain the park’s iconic carriage roads for the enjoyment of bikers, walkers, joggers and riders on horse-drawn carriages.

The reward for the volunteers: Pride in a job well done; a traditional “CCC meal” of chili, cornbread and cider (plus a fourth “C” of cake), in a nod to the Civilian Conservation Corps that helped build the carriage roads during the Great Depression; and perhaps a fifth “C” of camaraderie.

America the Beautiful Volunteer Pass

After 250 hours of cumulative volunteer time in Acadia, you can get an America the Beautiful Volunteer Pass that gives you free admission to the park and other federal recreation land for 12 months.

If you missed this year’s Take Pride in Acadia Day, there are plenty of other chances to volunteer in Acadia National Park, and help care for a park that brings joy to more than 2 million visitors a year.

Among some of the rewards of these other volunteer opportunities, beyond the satisfaction of giving back: A free 12-month “America the Beautiful Volunteer Pass” to the park and other federal recreation lands, if you donate a cumulative 250 hours of time; the right to be a “VIP” (Volunteers in Parks) and wear a special patch, if you’ve applied for one of the formal volunteer programs; or a free 2- to 4-week stay in housing on the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus, if you are accepted as an Artist-in-Residence and offer public programs in your particular art form. Continue reading →

Acadia National Park to hold hearing on Otter Creek trails

UPDATE Sept. 16: Since the original public hearing notice, Acadia National Park expanded the agenda to include update on the boat launch in the inner cove, and use and access to the outer cove fish house, as shared by Otter Creek Hall’s Facebook page.

Here’s the original story:

As part of a grand design to connect villages to Acadia National Park via footpath, two old Otter Creek trails slated for upgrading could be a boon for residents, campers and hikers, and may also address some of the long-standing tension between community and park.

Acadia officials will air the proposal to improve the trails at a hearing on Sept. 16, 6 p.m. at Otter Creek Hall, 82 Otter Creek Drive. Also likely to be discussed: The state of Otter Creek-park relations, which at times have been strained.

Otter Cove

Otter Creek residents hope to get improved trail access to Otter Cove.

The historic trails, long used by residents, would be rehabilitated and better marked, and would allow residents and visitors to walk from the village of Otter Creek, to newly opened park trails that connect to Gorham Mountain, Otter Cove and Blackwoods Campground.

The network of trails would create many long day-hiking opportunities, limited only by one’s imagination, map, or guidebook.

And it may also help ease some of the old conflicts between the park and the Otter Creek community, which was cut off from the waterfront after John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought land along Otter Cove in the 1930s, as part of his vision for the park. Continue reading →

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell shares agenda, personal notes at Acadia National Park

It didn’t receive a lot of attention, but U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell revealed some nuggets about her agenda for National Parks — and her personal life – during a sweeping speech at Acadia National Park.

US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell

US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Department of the Interior photo.

In her remarks at the Schoodic Education and Research Center on Aug. 15, Jewell touched on a wide range of topics, including the challenges of stingy federal spending on parks, the need to start preparing a new generation of potential rangers and other National Park personnel, the scary effects of global warming on federal lands and the important role of the parks as science classrooms for youths.

Jewell, 58, the former CEO of REI, a national outdoor retail company, started on a personal note.

She said that her visit to Acadia National Park on Friday brought back memories of the first time she traveled to the Maine park 37 years ago. Continue reading →

Sally Jewell to boost youth program at Acadia National Park

A youth program at Acadia National Park will receive a boost during a visit by Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis.

Jewell and Jarvis will speak during an event at 3 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 15 at the Schoodic Education and Research Center.

Blueberry Hill on the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park

Blueberry Hill offers fine ocean views from the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park.

It will be the first visit to Acadia National Park by Jewell in her official capacity as Interior secretary, a spokeswoman said.

Jewell and Jarvis will promote a program between the park service and the Schoodic Institute involving youth and science research, according to a release by Acadia National Park. Continue reading →

Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park gets new protection on peak

Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park is benefiting from an important project aimed at protecting the fragile terrain on its peak.

Using rocks and stones mostly from a massive cairn on Sargent Mountain, workers are completing a new 50-foot causeway on the Sargent South Ridge Trail. The work is being done to encourage hikers to stay on the trail instead of venturing to the subalpine zone around the mountaintop.

Members of Youth Conservation Corps swing sledge hammers to bust rocks as part of project on Sargent Mountain

From left to right, Liam Hassett, 16, of Cleveland, Ransom Burgess, 18, of Bar Harbor and Billy Brophy, 15, of Hyattsville, Maryland swing sledgehammers to bust stones into tiny pieces for creating a new 50-foot-long causeway atop Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park. The three are members of the Acadia Youth Conservation Corps.

The new causeway is being constructed with two layers – rocks and stones on the bottom and gravel stones on top, along with a stone border on each side. The work is shoring up a section of the trail that was deeply eroded, said Acadia Trails Foreman Gary Stellpflug on the peak on Tuesday.

“It’s really a good project,” Stellpflug said while he and other workers moved dozens of stones and rocks into the new trail section. Continue reading →