Massachusetts, Maine, & Rhode Island

June 3-12, 2022

This was our first longer trip in the van. We travelled to Provincetown, MA and stayed at Dunes’ Edge Campground. By happenstance, we were in Provincetown during Pride Weekend which was festive and fun.

From Provincetown, we drove to Portland, a town that proved to be great for biking. We ate at the Green Elephant which served really good vegetarian/vegan food. The Brussel sprouts were particularly excellent!

That night we stayed at our first Boondockers Welcome: Woodsey Midcoast Driveway, Woolwich, ME. What an excellent spot! Out of the way, really beautiful setting right on the bay. Then we left to go to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens – a great place to visit – where we saw huge wooden trolls.

At Acadia, we stayed at Mt. Dessert Narrows Campground. Because we were staying for a few days and didn’t want to unhook every time we wanted to sightsee, we rented a car from the Bar Harbor Airport.

On the first full day at Acadia, we enjoyed a beautiful sunny 70-degree day, allowing us to bike and hike. We rode part of the Witch Hole Pone Loop and the Tri Lakes Loop. Then we hiked up the North Trail to the top of Pemetic Mountain and hiked down via the Northwest Trail, a much steeper rock scrambling descent. At the bottom, we found the Jordan Pond Carry Over which was a lovely wooded, mostly flat walk along Eagle Lake. That brought us back to our bikes, which we (exhaustedly) mounted and rode the rest of the Tri Lakes Loop and Witch Hole Pond back to our car at the Hulls Cove parking lot.

The next few days brought heavy rain, so we slept in a bit, did some shopping, and drove into Bar Harbor. Similar to the other towns on our trip, Bar Harbor was dressed up for Pride Month. Through the raindrops, we hiked up the Gorham Mountain Trail, down the Cadillac Cliffs Trail, and around the Jordan Pond Trail. We also drove up Cadillac Mountain but had no views due to the fog.

Because the rain made hiking and biking very difficult, we drove around Northeast Harbor (not worth visiting), Southwest Harbor (a cute but tiny town), and Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, which was pretty cool particularly with the bells ringing on the buoys in the water. We saw some nice views along Somme Sound, including the fjard (a smaller fjord).

Leaving Acadia, we drove down to Newport, RI, where we stayed at Meadowlark RV Park, which was by far the ugliest of the campgrounds we have stayed at. We discovered while there that they have no showers or toilets, which forced us to take our first shower in the van.

Newport was a fun town, which we biked into, walked part of the Cliff Walk, and rode around town. We visited the very touristy wharf area, historic downtown, and saw some of the mansions. We also celebrated our 28th anniversary with Guinness and sweet potato fries at The Fastnet Pub. Then we rode back to the van for the rest of the evening.

We ended the trip with a walk to Paradise Valley Park, a small park next to the campground that has the only 8-vaned windmill in the US and a one-bedroom schoolhouse.