Spend a Week in Maine With Me: 1 Week Itinerary

Maine is one of my favorite places to visit in the summer. The vibes are immaculate, the temperature is perfect, and the scenery is beautiful. I've been to a few different parts of Maine; however, my most recent trip last June was probably my favorite in terms of what we were able to do and see in our week there. If you're planning a trip to Maine, here's my recommended itinerary!

Table of Contents:

• Getting to Maine

• Where to Stay

• Day One: Acadia National Park & Bar Harbor

• Day Two: Acadia National Park & Bar Harbor

• Day Three: Acadia National Park & Bass Harbor Light House

• Day Four: Peaks Island & Kennebunkport

• Day Five: Mount Major (NH) & Cape Elizabeth Lighthouses

• Day Six: Portland

• Final Thoughts & Highlights

Getting to Maine

There are several ways to get to Maine, depending on your origin. This itinerary is geared towards the eastern coast of Maine, so you may need to conduct additional research if you plan to visit central/western Maine, as it's a large state. If you are following this itinerary, or even just planning on visiting Acadia National Park, the closest airport would be Bangor International Airport, located about an hour outside of the park. Also within 3 hours of the park are Augusta State Airport and Portland International Airport, which would be the ideal airport to fly into if you're starting your trip or planning your trip around Portland, Maine. If traveling from a state that is south of Maine, Portland is also accessible by train on the Amtrak Downeaster Line, which runs daily from Boston, MA, and Brunswick, ME. Maine as a whole is also very accessible by car, which is always how I've traveled there!

Where to Stay

It's hard to fully break down where to stay when planning your trip to Maine, as it depends on what type of accommodations you are looking for, as well as which area you're planning on visiting. There are several different Airbnb & VRBO options throughout the state. Hotels are also pretty easy to come by, especially in the Portland area. I personally mostly use booking.com for any trip if I'm booking a hotel; from my experience, they've always been a reliable third-party booking option. Camping is also another option, which is what we chose to do during the part of our trip that was spent in the Acadia area. I personally love the app Campendium to look for campsites. On my most recent trip, we camped for a few days at Mount Desert Island Campground, and we both loved it. I definitely recommend this campground if you're planning on spending any time camping around Acadia on your trip to Maine. It's a great campground, and it's located only about 10 minutes outside of Bar Harbor / Acadia.

Day One: Acadia National Park & Bar Harbor

For our trip, we were coming from PA, so we decided to break up our drive the night before and stay at about a halfway point in NH. We woke up pretty early from our night in NH and made the rest of our drive to Acadia. Acadia National Park has about 4 million visitors a year, and is one of the top 10 most visited National Parks in the U.S, and is located along the North Atlantic coastline. Acadia does require an entry permit, which can be purchased at the park entrance if you don't already have an annual park pass. We got to the park midday, and started off at Thunder Hole to try and watch it going off. Thunder Hole is located along Park Loop Road between Sand Beach and Otter Cliff and is a small inlet carved out of rock, where, under certain conditions, the waves rush into the channel and compress air, which causes a thunder-like sound. Sometimes, along with this, the waves will also shoot up higher in the air. Unfortunately, we didn't come at the right time to experience the true thunder hole, but it was still a pretty first stop in the park, and one I recommend checking out. This was our only stop in the park for our first day because we wanted to grab an early dinner, but if you have more time, I recommend checking out Sand Beach. I have a whole other post with a more detailed guide to Acadia National Park that you can check out here. After finishing our stop in the park, we took the short drive over to the town of Bar Harbor and grabbed dinner. Bar Harbor is a seaside town located right outside of the park with a ton of different shops and restaurants, overall just a really neat place to check out! We ate dinner at Bar Harbor Beer Works and walked around a little bit before heading to our campsite at Mount Desert Island Campground. I recommend this campground so much! We had a great experience, the campsites are big and they're spread out enough that you have plenty of privacy without being remote. We spent the night exploring the campground and going down to the dock before just hanging out for the night and having a campfire.

Day Two: Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Camping

We started off day two by having breakfast at our campground and getting ready for our day. Our first stop of the day was the Bubbles Trail, specifically the Bubbles Nubble Loop trail, a 3.6-mile loop trail. Unfortunately, it started absolutely pouring pretty early into the hike. Thankfully, we packed ponchos just in case, and we still had a great time, despite not getting to fully experience all of the views. Normally, when not covered in fog, the views from the top are beautiful. This is probably one of my favorite hikes in the park! If it's not too crowded, I recommend taking some time to check out Jordan Pond afterwards, one of the most popular spots in the park, and for good reason. After our hike, we headed to the visitor center to grab our souvenirs! From the visitor center, we headed back to Thunder Hole to attempt to see it go off again. Unfortunately, we were out of luck again, which you'll notice is a theme for our time in the park, haha! We finished our second day at the park and headed back into Bar Harbor to grab another early dinner at Testa's. The food here was great! We walked around Bar Harbor a little more before heading back to our campsite for an early night since we were planning on waking up around 3:00 am the next morning for sunrise!

Day Three: Acadia National Park, Bass Head Light Station

Day three started off bright and early, around 3:00 am, in an attempt to catch the sunrise at Cadillac Mountain. I was able to get the sunrise permit the night before, and this is something I've always wanted to be able to see! If you didn't know, this is the spot where you can first see the sun rise in the US. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side again, and because of a storm we had the night before, it was super, super foggy outside, and we only caught a tiny glimpse of the sunrise. I still had fun, though, and I'm glad we still got to go through the experience! A permit is required to access Cadillac Mountain by car, regardless of going for sunrise or just for a regular visit, so I definitely recommend looking into which type of visit best fits your itinerary and making the stop here. I've come to Cadillac Mountain mid-day on a previous trip to Acadia, and the views are amazing! After our failed sunrise attempt, we went back to our campsite, had breakfast, and packed up our site since we were leaving Acadia and heading down near the Portland area for the rest of our trip. After packing up our campsite, we went back into the park and did the Beehive Trail hike. I loved this hike!! It was only 1.5 miles round trip, but very difficult with a lot of elevation gain; however, the views were so rewarding. This was definitely my favorite hike that I've done so far in this park; however, it can get insanely crowded, especially during peak season. We attempted one last time to see Thunder Hole, before officially leaving the park, and were unsuccessful yet again, so we just enjoyed our lunch on the seaside cliffs instead. Our last stop before leaving the Acadia area was the Bass Head Light House, which is a little bit of a drive from the main part of the park. This is such a picturesque spot and a great way to end our trip in Acadia! We headed down to our Airbnb, which was about an hour southwest of Portland in Lebanon, Maine.

Cadillac Mountain

Beehive Trail

Beehive Trail

Day Four: Peaks Island, Kennebunkport

Day four started off by heading into Portland and grabbing donuts at The Holy Donut. There are two locations in Portland: 177 Commercial Street & 194 Park Avenue. These donuts were AMAZING! They're potato-based donuts and have so many delicious flavors. I personally got a sea salt chocolate and one of the seasonal lemon blueberry donuts.

Next, we headed over to Casco Bay Transit District and bought our ferry tickets to Peaks Island. Peaks Island is a small island off the coast of Portland with some different shops, walking trails, biking, and golf cart loops, etc. It's about a 15-minute ferry ride and was such a fun little place to spend the first half of our day. You can buy a ferry ticket right at the ticket booth when you get to Casco Bay, and it is $14 round-trip for an adult. There is also an option to take your car on the ferry; however, the island is so small, we had absolutely no need to have a car with us. There was a lot to see on this island, and you can explore it by golf cart, bike, or on foot, which is what we did. We decided, since we weren't in a rush and really wanted to soak up our time here, that we would just walk around the island. We made a few stops along the way, including the Umbrella Cover Museum. Yep, you heard that right, an entire museum...dedicated to you guessed it...umbrella covers! Sounds a little odd, but this was such a unique and quirky little stop and was honestly a fun little add-on to our day, plus it's free, so no reason not to stop in! Before ending our half day on the island, we stopped and grabbed lunch at Island Lobster Company. This was the first spot where my fiancé got his first lobster roll of the trip, the thing he had been waiting for. I don't like seafood personally, but he loved it and said he recommends it! We hopped back on the ferry and headed back into Portland. The ferry runs pretty frequently, which was super convenient!

From Portland, we headed down to Kennebunkport to spend the next few hours walking around. Kennebunkport was about a 30-minute drive from Portland, and is a fun place to stop, even if just for a couple of hours. Another coastal town, it has a ton of historic homes, a few beaches, shops, restaurants, and lobster shacks. It's also a fishing village with a working harbor. I've been here before and think this is such a cute little town with so many unique shops. After spending some time in Kennebunkport, we just headed back to our Airbnb to end the day!

Day Five: Mount Major (NH), Cape Elizabeth Lighthouses

Our Airbnb was super close to the New Hampshire border, so we took advantage of this, and actually started day five off in New Hampshire, hiking Mount Major. The trail we did was about 3 miles round-trip and was a moderately difficult hike with such amazing views! Mount Major is located in Alton, NH, near the southern edge of Lake Winnipesaukee. The mountain has 1,785 feet of elevation, and there are a couple of different trail options to take. The peak overlooks Lake Winnepesauke and was an amazing spot to pause in our hike and really just take in the scenery. This truly was an awesome hike and one of my favorite ones I've ever done!

We stopped back at our Airbnb to freshen up and eat lunch before heading into the Portland area, specifically Cape Elizabeth, for our own self-guided lighthouse tour. If you're a Noah Kahan fan like me, I'm sure you know of his EP, Cape Elizabeth. I love that song and figured, while we were in the area, let's check out the place that inspired this EP! All of these lighthouses are within 20 minutes of each other and were each so different! We started at Two Lights State Park to see the first two lighthouses. These two were a little underwhelming, to be honest, and could be skipped if you're not set on seeing all of them! Our next lighthouse stop on our tour was Spring Point Ledge Light, where we walked around for a bit. You can get pretty close to the lighthouse, and the surrounding views are beautiful. Next, we hit Ram Island Lighthouse, which you can only see from a distance, but can see from the Portland Head Light park, which was where we saw it. This was my favorite lighthouse of the day, it was such a beautiful view!! They had a few food trucks in this specific park, too, so my boyfriend got his second lobster roll of the trip and also loved it! Lastly, we headed to Bug Light to end our self-guided tour. This was the only lighthouse that I've actually been to already, so it was neat to go back years later. After this, we went and grabbed dinner at Wander by Longwood, and all I can say is WOW! The food, the service, the atmosphere, all great! This is a little more on the expensive side, but so worth it. It's an awesome farm-to-table spot located right on the farm with all fresh ingredients and just overall such a fun vibe! We ended the night with some mini golf at Schooners.

Day Six: Kayaking (NH), Portland Breweries, Old Port

Our last day in Maine was another busy one, but another one starting off in New Hampshire! We grabbed breakfast and coffee at Baked and Brewed in Alton, New Hampshire. I got a Biscoff latte and an egg and cheese handpie, both were amazing! Next, we headed over to SUPNH (5 Mt Major Hwy, Alton, NH 03810) to rent kayaks, and we spent the next few hours kayaking on the river. I'm not a huggggge kayaker, I prefer paddleboarding (which you can rent here too, I just didn't want to risk falling in since I didn't have a bathing suit lol), but it was a great time regardless, and the scenery was beautiful.

When we finished our morning kayaking, we headed into Portland to do another little self-guided tour (we love coming up with our own little tours when we go on trips), this time, a brewery tour. We had read that Portland had a lot of neat breweries, so we definitely wanted to take some time to check some out. The best part was, a lot of them were within walking distance of each other. We started at Rising Ride Brewery. Rising Tide Brewery is an independent, family-owned brewery founded in 2010. This brewery uses locally sourced ingredients in every beer, and their motto is "a rising tide lifts all boats."

Following Rising Tide, we popped essentially right next door to Austin Street Brewery. Austin Street Brewery was a little bit of a different vibe and felt more like a coffee shop, which I personally loved. This brewery was established in 2013 by two friends and officially opened its first location in 2014.

Our last stop was Apres, which was not originally on our list, but was recommended to us by somebody while we were at one of the other breweries. This ended up being my favorite of the three and is a laid-back seltzer and hard cider house. The atmosphere is relaxed, modern, boho, and fun. This spot opened in 2020 and has indoor/outdoor seating. Each spot was unique in its own way, and they all had great drinks, friendly staff, and neat atmospheres.

After our little tour, we headed to grab dinner at Wilson County Barbecue, a North Carolina-inspired barbecue restaurant. This was ironic, because I went to college and used to live in NC, only about an hour outside of Wilson County, so the food was definitely nostalgic! We ended our night walking through Old Port, the historic, waterfront district. This area was neat to see, it was lined with cobblestone streets, and a lot of brick buildings. There were plenty of bars, restaurants, and shops in this area as well, so we took some time here to explore. We did a little shopping before ending our night with some ice cream at Beal's Ice Cream.

Final Thoughts & Highlights

Maine is truly such a unique and beautiful place to visit, and it's so hard to come up with an itinerary that does it justice. There is so much more to see in Maine other than the east coast itinerary broken down in this post, and I definitely encourage you to take the time to explore what this beautiful state has to offer if you get the opportunity. Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor are definitely highlights for me. I love spending time in these places and experiencing what they have to offer. My first time in Portland was also such a great experience. I had no expectations going into our days spent in Portland, and I was amazed at how much there is to do. We had a pretty jam-packed but super fun week in Maine, and I hope this post inspires you to take your own trip! I hope this post gives you plenty of ideas for things to do and see in eastern Maine. Thanks for reading, and remember, there's always more to be explored :)

-nicole elizabeth