August, 2021
Another year has passed and I am only now getting down to sharing photos of our August road trip to Acadia National Park. Dealing with another year in a pandemic as well as re-planning a wedding, I hadn’t had any extra energy to put this vacation into words. Now, as the year closes, I shouldn’t procrastinate anymore.
Similar to 2020, we decided that it would be best not to travel abroad. Therefore, I made a goal of mine to visit a bunch of national parks for 2021. While I didn’t get to visit as many as I would like (we didn’t make it to New River Gorge in West Virginia), we still managed to visit a good number of national parks this year. Our trip to Acadia National Park included an experience to visit various towns and cities on the East Coast, some I have seen before, some not. To map out, we drove from our home in the DMV with stops in Connecticut (to grab some New Haven Pizza at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, then on to Portland Maine, and followed by our pinnacle stop and camping in Acadia National Park. Our return drive included stops in Salem, Boston and New York City. We ended our trip with a short visit with family in Pennsylvania before finally heading home after about 10 days on the road. During this drive, I found lots of hidden gems of photos that I hope you all enjoy!
Maine: Portland and Acadia National Park
Our first ‘real’ destination on our road trip was Portland, Maine. Although we only stayed one night, we made the best of our visit and continued our food tour portion of this trip. The food tour portion of our trip included visiting The Highroller Lobster (you can’t go to Maine without getting some lobster), Allagash Brewery, and Duckfat for dinner, so the usual tourist food shops. As for site-seeing, we mostly walked around downtown Portland since we did not have a lot of time in the town. We did, however, make it over to the Portland Head Light at around sunset. Here, I tried out for the first time the wide angle lens I rented, a Tokina 14-20mm f/2, for the trip. At least with landscapes, I honestly did not see a significant difference between my staple travel lens and a wide angle. However, I do notice the difference later on when taking astrophotography shots.
After Portland, we made our way up the Maine coastline to Acadia National Park. We had one brief stop at Fort Popham along the way, but we mostly just drove straight through. We reached our campground at Mt Desert Narrows Camping Resort, set up our tent, and got settled in, before making our way into Acadia National Park to Sand Beach for some astrophotography of the Milky Way on a new moon night. I had spent the better part of two weeks regularly watching the weather of the region. For most of the time, it seemed that the skies would be clear during our stay; however, as we got closer to our arrival, a Maine fog rolled over the region. Through our whole drive up, I began to worry that this trip would have been for not, to the point I started to annoy E with my anxiety. Luckily for us, on the night of the new moon, the skies cleared up just long enough (for roughly an hour to two hours) for the stars in the sky to shine brightly. On our second night, however, clouds and rain overtook the whole night. Fortunately, I had at least one night of astrophotography, and the photos were well worth the trip.
Massachusetts: Salem and Boston
Once we had our fill of the wilderness and roughing it up in a tent (not really since we had access to a shower and all), we made our way back south and visited cities that have been on my list to visit for a few years. First off, we swung by Salem. We arrived in the evening, so most tourist activities had already closed. We parked near the Salem Visitor’s Center, walked to the House of Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace (closed when we arrived), and walked back to Essex Street Pedestrian Mall. Along the Pedestrian Mall, we found a restaurant, Turner’s Seafood at Lyceum Hall, where E could get more local seafood.
After we had our fill of seafood, we left Salem to head to Boston. We stayed in a lovely AirBnB near Harvard University in Cambridge. Since we arrived late, we relaxed for the rest of the evening so that we would be well rested for our walking tour of Cambridge and Boston. Bright and early the next day, we grabbed a quick breakfast near Harvard University and did a short walking tour of the campus followed by a short walk-through of MIT’s campus. We took the train from Cambridge to downtown Boston. Starting at Boston Common, we began the Freedom Trail, hitting all the major historical sites of Boston in one long walk. We saw Paul Revere’s headstone at Granary Burying Ground, grabbed some lunch at Faneuil Hall, passed by Old North Church, and ending at Bunker Hill Monument. By the end of this walking tour, E and I were quite worn out and looking forward to grabbing a drink at Sam Adams Taproom near Faneuil Hall. Once we had a fill of the day, we headed back to Cambridge, ate some dinner and went to bed, to prepare for our next leg of our road trip to New York City.
New York: New York City
Since we had a car and parking in New York City is horrid, we stayed at a small hotel across the river in Jersey City. Since E and I have both been to NYC before (at least for me, pre-2001), we had both seen at some point most tourist spots. For the most part, we spent our time in NYC with a walking tour coupled with a food tour. We found some NYC pizza at Lombardi’s Coal Oven Pizza. We stopped in Chinatown for Bingsu at Sweet Moment and spicy noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods. We grabbed a bagel at the train station on our way to the Botanical Garden. We also met up with E’s old coworker for drinks at an Irish pub and food at an izakaya, nonono. To the annoyance of E and with my love of matcha, I specifically sought out a matcha cafe (that turned out to be pretty far out of the way) for matcha ice cream. I am usually not one for vegan ice cream, but Matchaful in a downtown Whole Foods had quite delicious ice cream and at least for me, it was well worth the journey. Of course, all the food we had in NYC was delicious and I highly recommend all those restaurants.
As for site-seeing, we did walk by several of the usual tourist spots: One World Trade Center and 9/11 Memorial, Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, and Chinatown. When planning this trip, E and I discussed which museum we would like to visit. We were split in visiting the Museum of Modern Art, or The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or trekking all the way out to the New York Botanical Garden for the Yayoi Kusama exhibit. Since we missed the Yayoi Kusama exhibit in DC, I convinced E to visit it in NYC. While I loved the off-beat absurdity of Kusama artwork, E was not as impressed. Still, we both enjoyed getting out to a botanical garden. Before heading off to visit family in Pennsylvania, we quickly stopped at Liberty State Park for a view of all of NYC.
Until next time,
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