Acadia National Park Self-Guided Driving Tour from Cadillac – Mount Desert, Maine

EXPERIENCE

Start by downloading the Action Tour Guide app, which will function as your personal tour guide, audio tour, and map. Purchase one tour per car, not per person. Everyone listens together! Note: This 22+ mile-long tour covers the essentials of Acadia National Park in 2-3 hours.

Once downloaded, your tour begins at the breathtaking summit of Cadillac Mountain. As you descend, you’ll hear about the meaning of the park’s name and take in jaw-dropping vistas.

While you drive, you’ll unearth the geological history that made these mountains possible, full of shifting plates, devastating volcanoes and earthquakes. But that’s not all! You’ll also get glacial history going back thirty thousand years.

Next, you’ll get to travel back in time to the short-lived Green Mountain Cog Railway, once a major attraction on this mountain.

Your journey will take you along Park Loop Road, as you revisit a devastating history of fires and powerful regrowth. In addition, you’ll hear why the foliage is truly so rich, rooted in temperature changes and a myriad of pigments!

Up next, you’ll pass one of the 250 beaver ponds and learn more about these fascinating creatures. Then, dig deeper into Acadia’s wildlife with a story about the extinction and reintroduction of the peregrine falcon.

After snapping some photos at the Schooner Head Overlook, you’ll return to 1604, when Europeans first arrived in the area!
Then, hear about how a radio tycoon built one of the most important and efficient radio stations in the world, which the Navy used in WWII.

As you roll along, you’ll find out about the Wabanaki tribes and how they survived. Hunting and berry gathering certainly sound fun, but their lives depended upon it!

You’ll then uncover the Rockefeller connections to the area, including how the land, roads, and bridges are a result of their efforts. On top of that, you’ll hear about their quirks, like John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s desire to bring back a past full of carriages!

The tour then takes you to the Jordan Pond, the deepest in Acadia. This very pond was carved out of the earth twenty thousand years ago by a great glacier!

Then continue and behold the very precariously perched Bubble Rock and find out how it got into its peculiar predicament!

You’ll then head to Eagle Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Acadia and a food source for local birds! Your journey concludes here

HIGHLIGHTS

Take in sweeping vistas from atop Cadillac Mountain
Unravel geological history going back to the dinosaurs
Learn about a short-lived railroad and the reasons for its demise
Unveil the stories behind the once-endangered peregrine falcons
Find out what the Rockefellers have to do with this park

Discover more exciting & fun things to do in Mount Desert