Acadia is the only national park I've been to that smells like the ocean. That might sound obvious — it's on the coast of Maine — but it takes you off guard when you're hiking through a spruce and birch forest and the salt air comes through without warning, carried on a breeze off Frenchman Bay. The park sits mostly on Mount Desert Island, connected to the Maine mainland by a short causeway, and it combines two landscapes that don't usually overlap: rocky Atlantic coastline and real mountains. The result is something you can't quite prepare for.
The park was established in 1919, making it the first national park east of the Mississippi, and much of its distinctive character comes from the Rockefeller family's contribution of more than 45 miles of crushed-granite carriage roads, built in the early twentieth century to give horse-drawn carriages access to the park's interior. These roads, closed to motorized vehicles, remain one of Acadia's best features — wide, smooth, winding through forest and over stone-arch bridges, and excellent for hiking, cycling, and just walking without having to think about traffic. The bridges themselves are architectural surprises; each one is unique and built with the same fine granite that defines the park's geology.
Cadillac Mountain, at 1,529 feet the highest point on the eastern seaboard, is the park's most visited summit. In the fall and early spring, it's technically the first place in the United States where the sun rises. The summit road takes you there easily; the hike up the North Ridge Trail is better. The view from the top covers the island, the Atlantic, and dozens of smaller offshore islands in every direction. In late June the summit was crowded but the light was extraordinary — everything washed in that clear, northern-latitude gold.
Bar Harbor, on the northeast edge of the island, is the main visitor town and a good base. Acadia is an unusually accessible park — much of the best scenery is visible from the Park Loop Road — but the trails reward anyone willing to put in the effort. The Precipice Trail is the steepest thing I've climbed in any national park: iron rungs driven into the cliff face, ladder sections, exposed ledges, and then an absurd view from the top.