Bar Harbor looks out over Frenchman Bay from the north-east shore of Mount Desert Island, with the Porcupine Islands humped in the water in front of it and the granite domes of Acadia National Park rising behind. It is a small town of a couple of thousand year-round residents, but in summer it swells with visitors, cruise ship passengers and cyclists, and its streets fill with ice cream shops, lobster restaurants and outfitters.
The town has a Gilded Age past. In the late nineteenth century, America's richest families, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers and others, built huge summer "cottages" along the shore, with dozens of rooms and armies of servants. Many of them burned in the great fire of 1947, which swept across much of the island and destroyed homes and forests, but some survive as inns. The same families helped to create Acadia, the first national park east of the Mississippi, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. built a network of carriage roads through the forests, with beautiful stone bridges, which are closed to motor vehicles and kept for walkers, cyclists and horses.
The riding starts right here. The Park Loop Road begins near Hulls Cove, just north of town, at the park's visitor centre, and runs in a long loop past lakes, forests, cliffs and beaches, with views over the bay and the ocean. Part of it is one-way, the speed limits are low, and in summer it can be crowded with cars, buses and cyclists, so it is a ride for enjoying the views rather than the corners. A park pass is required. Outside the park, Route 3 and Route 102 circle the island with quieter roads through villages and along the water.
The weather changes quickly here. Fog rolls in from the sea, even in summer, and can make the roads damp and cool; the water is cold all year, rarely above fifteen degrees. Autumn, from late September to mid-October, is spectacular, with the maples and birches turning red and gold against the dark spruce, and the crowds thin out.
Bar Harbor has fuel, food and every service, and Ellsworth, about twenty-six kilometres away on the mainland, is the nearest larger town. Eat lobster, of course, perhaps on a wooden bench by the harbour, and watch the boats come in.