Tag Archives: labor-day

New Acadia wayside exhibits mark history, seasons at park

Under sunny skies during a Labor Day weekend visit, Smriti Rao and her daughter, Nandita Karthik, 8, stopped along Acadia National Park’s Loop Road to enjoy new wayside exhibits overlooking Frenchman Bay.

Acadia wayside exhibit

Just south of Hulls Cove Visitor Center, a pullout on the Park Loop Road overlooking Frenchman Bay features this wayside exhibit, providing the history of how Mount Desert Island, Cadillac, Pemetic and Acadia got their names.

“I think they are very helpful,” Rao said on Sunday after pausing to read an exhibit titled “The French Connection,” describing the role that Samuel Champlain and others from France and elsewhere played in the history of Mount Desert Island. “It reminded me of what the French contributed.”

Her daughter, a third-grader, pointed to a section of the exhibit about the Wabanaki Indians and said it was similar to what she learned at school about Native American history.

Visitors to Acadia National Park this year, such as Smriti, Nandita and 6 others in their family up over the Labor Day weekend, may be surprised to see new roadside and other exhibits, erected in time for the park’s Centennial next year.

acadia wayside exhibit

Another wayside exhibit overlooking Frenchman Bay describes the importance of the bay throughout history and how it got its name. It identifies the Porcupine Islands, and includes photos of a birch bark canoe, a square-rigger and a cruise ship. Don’t just drive by. Stop and learn.

On Mount Desert Island, 64 new Acadia wayside exhibits were installed last fall and winter, including some that replaced exhibits dating from the 1970s and 1980s, said Lynne Dominy, chief of interpretation and education at Acadia National Park.

“Over a couple of months, suddenly everything was replaced across MDI,” she said. The exhibits can be found along the Cadillac Summit Loop and parking lot, the Jordan Pond House observation deck, the Park Loop Road and other parts of the island. Continue reading

5 tips to avoid crowds on Labor Day weekend in Acadia National Park

Labor Day weekend is sure to bring out the masses to Acadia National Park, especially since it was named the No. 1 destination this summer by both readers of USA Today and viewers of Good Morning America.

Ocean Path in Acadia National Park

Late-summer goldenrod contrasts with the pink granite along Ocean Path in Acadia National Park.

Here are 5 tips to avoid what can be a maddening crowd:

1) Buy your Acadia National Park pass either early or late at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center (open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through August 31, and 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in September) or the Bar Harbor Village Green Information Center (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Columbus Day). Better yet, buy your Acadia National Park pass at one of a dozen other places, as listed on the Acadia Web site:

Blackwoods Campground
Sand Beach Entrance Station
Seawall Campground
Thompson Island Information Center
Continue reading

Labor Day, nature signal end of summer in Acadia National Park

The cricket’s chirp, the shorter days, the bloom of goldenrod and cotton-grass – all are bittersweet signs of the passing of the seasons at Acadia National Park.

The white tufts of cotton-grass particularly sadden Jill E. Weber, co-author of the field guide, “The Plants of Acadia National Park,” because “it means summer’s almost over.”

Though you may never have seen cotton-grass, you will know it when you see it.

Cotton-grass in Acadia National Park

A hiker points out a field of cotton-grass in the distance in Acadia National Park.

Four varieties of cotton-grass are listed in “The Plants of Acadia National Park,” a project of the Garden Club of Mount Desert, Friends of Acadia and the Maine Natural History Observatory, and they all have a distinctive cottony bloom and grow in wetlands.

Despite its name and appearance, cotton-grass is not a grass, but a sedge. In fact, about a quarter of the plants in Acadia are grass-like, some of which are sedges, others of which are rushes, and the rest true grasses. Acadia’s web site even features a handy rhyme to distinguish a sedge from a rush from a grass. Continue reading