Length: 2 miles, round trip
Time: 1.5 hours, including time to tide pool
Difficulty: easy to moderate
Bar Island is a small island just off the coast of Bar Harbor (town) that is part of Acadia National Park. At low tide it is connected to Mount Desert Island by a sandbar. Many people use this opportunity to tide pool—search for sea creatures—in the small pools left behind by the retreating water. When I visited, a couple of kids claimed they found two star fish, but I didn’t find a thing worthwhile. In fact, I didn’t find any of the three advertised “tide pooling” locations at the park to be worth a darn (Wonderland and Ship Harbor are the other two). All I ever saw were barnacles, snails, and perhaps some coin-size crabs. I had visited Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco, so I knew what good tide pooling was. There I saw sea anemones, urchins, star fish, crabs, mussels, clams, and even a dead seal that had been shot in the head.
The one thing to remember about tide pooling is that you must be careful on the rocks that are black (algae) or covered in seaweed, for they can be as slick as ice. I saw two people sustain serious injuries due to falls while I was at Acadia National Park, though not at Bar Island.
Seaweed covered rocks on the sandbar between Mount Desert Island and Bar Island in Acadia National Park
The sandbar is accessed from the end of Bridge Street in downtown Bar Harbor. I imagined it to be as wide as perhaps a sidewalk with a continuous stream of people walking along it, but the sandbar is nearly a quarter-mile wide, and when the tide is out it is impossible to imagine that water stands between Bar Island and Mount Desert Island during most of the day. The National Park Service reports that the sandbar is accessible 1.5 hours on either side of low tide, giving visitors a three hour window. Be sure to check the tide schedule before venturing over to Bar Island, because if you get stuck, you have an eight-hour wait until the water recedes enough to return to Mount Desert Island. A schedule was posted on Bar Island when I visited, but not at Bridge Street.
You can actually drive your vehicle on the sandbar, but it’s only a .4-mile walk from Bridge Street to the island, so you’d have to be pretty lazy to take a car unless you are elderly or disabled. If you took the free Island Explorer Shuttle Bus to Village Green in downtown Bar Harbor, you have an additional half-mile walk to Bridge Street.
While many people come for the tide pooling, there is also a trail on Bar Island that leads to a small hill on the east end that overlooks Bar Harbor and the surrounding area. The sign at the start claims the trail is one mile long, but the island isn’t much more than a half mile long, so this either refers to the out-and-back distance or to the distance from the end of Bridge Street (.9 mile according to my GPS).
The Bar Island Trail starts off up a slight hill on a wide, gravel path with a smooth surface. The majority of it runs through the forest, but there is a .1-mile stretch that is out in the open.
The trail forks .3 mile from the start. A sign indicates that the summit of the small hill you have been climbing is another .2 mile ahead on the fork to the left. The right fork used to be a private driveway to the property of Jack Perkins, an author, journalist, and TV personality who appeared on The Today Show and hosted A&E’s Biography. The National Park Service purchased his 12-acres in 2003, and the house and other buildings were torn down in 2010. The Private Drive sign was still up when I visited, so I did not venture farther, though it did not seem to stop other people from walking down the path.
Take a left at the Bar Island Trail / Jack Perkins Home fork to reach the highest point on Bar Island, Acadia National Park
It is at this point that the trail becomes a more traditional hiking trail, no longer an old dirt road. The surface is covered in small rocks, so watch your step.
The trail does get moderately steep at the very end and somewhat dissolves into a find-your-own-way-to-the-top trail. I saw people walking all over the place on a hodgepodge of footpaths. There is a large pile of rocks that I assume marks the summit. Unlike the mountain trails at Acadia National Park, there is no sign posted at the official summit.
The view of Bar Harbor is mostly obscured by trees, but there is a path that leads down towards the shore and perhaps to a better view. I saw a family attempt to walk down the path, but they returned due to the daughter “not having the proper attire,” meaning that she had on flip flops and couldn’t walk on the rocky and steep surface. I did not attempt to check it out myself.
I found my trip to Bar Island, which included some tide pooling and the hike on the Bar Island Trail, to be somewhat of a disappointment. However, it is a popular attraction at low tide and a good choice for families with younger children. There aren’t many easy hikes at Acadia National Park, but this is definitely one of them.
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Last updated on August 10, 2023