After our day at Antietam we jumped on the Mid-Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route as it crossed the Pennsylvania state line. Our trip south a few weeks earlier through Pennsylvania was one filled with traffic, congestion, and cities, but the BDR took us well off the beaten path and showed us a more rural, relaxed and beautiful side of the state that we enjoyed immensely.
As we were feeling the pressure to get back and retrieve our boat from the person that stored it for us over the winter we didn’t have much time to stop and smell the roses, but crisscrossing the many valleys and ridges made for a nice drive nonetheless.
After a night with Yogi (one of the few campgrounds open we could find) we transitioned over to the Northeast Backcountry Discovery Route.
We again found one of the only campgrounds open in the Catskills and then made our way into Connecticut and Massachusetts. We were looking forward to reaching Vermont and New Hampshire because both of those states actually have National Forests and we anticipated finding places to camp would be much easier. Instead, as we reached the southern border of Vermont we found every road onto the National Forest gated and locked. Our old nemesis, “closed for the season” struck again. We had to strike our plans of following the remainder of the BDR into Maine, and the next morning we made a beeline for our last destination of the trip, Acadia National Park in Maine.
After hours of searching up and down the coast of Maine we finally found a place to stay for a couple nights, and made our way over to Acadia for a few hikes.
We found that although Acadia was pretty busy and was happily taking entrance fees that a lot of the park was, yes, you guessed it, “closed for the season.” Even the pit toilets, which I don’t believe typically are at risk of loosing their plumbing due to freezing were closed.
Luckily we were able to find a few hikes that were open, and the sun gave us a great day to enjoy some viewpoints.
After a few hikes and a drive around the loop road we had pretty much seen what we could see that was open. We had one other objective while we were in Maine, a lobster roll. Bar Harbor would surely have a lobster roll for us, right?
After striking out on our first couple stops we found success.
With the lobster roll found we had done as much as we could, given our time and seasonal constraints. We were headed back to retrieve our boat and end our abbreviated East Coast Adventure. I’m glad we were able to see what we could on the East Coast before we headed back west. Who knows when we’ll be back, but we just saw the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are so many historical sites, backroads and miles of hikes we’ll have to figure out a way to get back sometime again.
We were back in Vermont after another day of driving, 4700 miles later to come full circle.
Our trip was far from over though. We had an entire country to cross, and with no deadline to get to a final destination that was unknown we could do some wandering on our way back west, but that’s for the next post.
Logistics:
- Routes: The Backcountry Discovery Routes are great travel options, especially in the east. What would otherwise be drives on crowded interstates turn into rural areas you would otherwise assume didn’t exist: https://ridebdr.com/
- Parks: Acadia is open, which is to say, they are there to collect your entrance fee (an America the Beautiful pass works), but almost all the infrastructure (visitor centers, bathrooms, towpaths, campgrounds, etc.) are closed well into April, at least.
- Campgrounds: Don’t plan on any being open in this neck of the woods (the entire Northeast region of the U.S.) until Memorial Day. There are a lot of campgrounds, but finding one that is open is going to be a chore. Dispersed sites are also out of the question because any road where there might be one will be closed. Good luck.
- Generally: Vehicle based travel and camping in the Northeast is going to be a summer and early fall only option. The remainder of the time, well, it’s a big country, head south or west, you’ll be endlessly frustrated trying to travel outside June – October.
