9 Amazing Maine Day Trips That Are Worth The Drive
Maine's coastline runs longer than California's when you follow every inlet and tidal reach, and the fishing villages built along it mostly stayed small. Kennebunkport, an hour south of Portland, grew from a working shipbuilding port into a Gilded Age summer retreat that still defines the southern coast. The Maine Maritime Museum in Bath preserves the only surviving shipyard in the country where large wooden sailing vessels were built. Together, these day trips take in remote coastline, maritime history, unusual landscapes, and some of Maine's best-known historic sites.
Acadia National Park
The state’s only National Park is about an hour southeast of Bangor on Mount Desert Island in Downeast Maine. Acadia National Park protects more than 47,000 acres of mountain, forest, and the highest rocky headlands on the Atlantic coast of the US. Acadia receives around 3 to 4 million visitors annually, making it one of the most-visited National Parks in the country.
If you can wake up early enough and secure a vehicle permit, drive up the Cadillac Summit Road to watch the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain. It's the highest point in the park and the first place in the US to see the sunrise from October to March. The 27-mile Park Loop Road takes drivers along the rocky coastline and past Sand Beach, Thunder Hole, and Otter Point. The Beehive Loop Trail is a challenging scramble with strong views of the Mount Desert Narrows and the Gulf of Maine. Continuing the Park Loop past Otter Point leads through dense forest and past Jordan Pond and Eagle Lake. The Jordan Pond House serves afternoon tea on its lawn. Before leaving the park, swing by the southwest corner of the island for a photo of the Bass Harbor Head Light Station, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988.
Baxter State Park
Baxter State Park is the largest of Maine's state parks at over 200,000 acres in the north-central region. About two hours north of Bangor, the park is best known as the home of Mount Katahdin, Maine's highest peak and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Baxter is a wilderness in the truest sense of the word. Inside its boundaries there is no electricity or running water and the roads are unpaved, in keeping with founder Percival Baxter's wishes that the area remain "forever wild."
The park has 215 miles of trails along with calm clear lakes and frequent moose sightings. The Chimney Pond Trail climbs through hardwood forest to a mountain pond at the floor of a glacial bowl. The Sandy Stream Pond Trail is shorter and stays mostly flat, with views of the east face of Katahdin and a reputation for moose sightings. On a hot summer day, you can swim in Togue Pond just a few hundred feet from the visitor center, or drive to Ledge Falls for a more remote excursion. Most campgrounds near water also offer canoe and kayak rentals.
Desert of Maine
Sand dunes probably aren't the first ecosystem you'd associate with Maine, but a 20-acre desert sits in the middle of a forest just twenty minutes north of Portland. Formed by glacial outwash during the Ice Age, the Desert of Maine is one of the state's odder natural attractions. Its history exhibits and family-oriented attractions make it a workable day trip for visitors with kids.
The desert can be explored along a mile-long interpretive path that wanders through the dunes, with signs and exhibits on the history and geology of the landscape. A second trail loops through the surrounding forest on the back side of the dunes for a shadier walk. The park's 1800s-style train runs between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. The Historic Barn is the only remaining structure from the Tuttle Farm in the 1700s. The restored farmhouse on the property serves as a living history museum. Younger visitors can wander the Gemstone Village labyrinth or work a Fossil Dig, and the park rounds out with an 18-hole mini golf course, a snack bar, and an old Ford Model T for family photos.
Portland Museum of Art
The Portland Museum of Art in Downtown Portland is the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine. Since its founding in 1882, the museum has become one of downtown Portland’s cultural landmarks. Today, the museum contains over 18,000 pieces of art and offers classes, lecture series, and film screenings throughout the year. As part of its Art for All mission, admission is free for visitors under 21 and for everyone on Friday nights and the third Thursday of each month.
The collection includes works of European, American, and contemporary art with paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and John Singer Sargent. Maine artists are well represented, especially the American landscape painter Winslow Homer, who lived and worked in Maine for most of his career. One of his best-known paintings, Weatherbeaten, depicts the coast of Maine and is part of the museum's collection. The museum also runs tours of Homer's studio at nearby Prout's Neck, which it acquired in 2006.
The Victoria Mansion
This lavish, pre-Civil War house in downtown Portland is one of the city’s best-known historic sites. The Victoria Mansion was built in the mid-19th century as a summer home for Ruggles Sylvester Morse and his wife, Olive, and is considered one of the premier examples of Italianate style architecture in the country. The painstakingly preserved National Historic Landmark still retains much of its original interior, and its decor and original heating and plumbing systems provide a clear window into the opulent lifestyle of the wealthy in the 1800s.
From May to October, the mansion offers public tours, providing access to gorgeous rooms, including a Gothic-style library, a Pompeian bathroom, and a Turkish smoking room. Most of the home’s original furniture and interior design elements, created by Gustave Herter, have been preserved and represent his sole surviving commission. The walls are decorated with trompe-l’œil paintings by Giuseppe Guidicini, among his last surviving works. Much of the house's original plumbing, central heating system, and gas lighting have been maintained as well. At the time of the house’s construction, these were considered pioneering design elements, and the Victoria Mansion, for its time, was technologically advanced and featured them.
The Maine Maritime Museum
The Maine Maritime Museum sits in Bath, just 40 minutes north of Portland, and tells the story of the state's seafaring heritage. The 20-acre campus on the banks of the Kennebec River holds artwork, artifacts, and documents along with a 19th-century shipyard, a working blacksmith shop, and more than 140 historic watercraft.
The Percy & Small Shipyard is the only surviving shipyard site in the US where large wooden sailing vessels were built. Among them was the Wyoming, the largest wooden vessel ever built in the country. The shipyard still has several of the original buildings from its heyday in the late 1800s, including the Donnell House, where the shipyard's owner lived. The Kenneth D. Kramer Blacksmith Shop is a reconstruction of the original structure and occasionally offers demonstrations of the historic craft. A permanent exhibit covers Maine's lobster industry, paired with a display of buoys donated by lobstermen up and down the coast. The museum runs cruises on the Kennebec to view several of the lighthouses along the river. The grounds also hold one of the largest sculptures in New England: a model of Wyoming's dimensions.
Kennebunkport
An hour south of Portland on Maine's southern coast, Kennebunkport is one of the state's classic summer towns. The fishing and shipbuilding port grew into a Gilded Age summer retreat in the late 19th century, and many of the sea captains' mansions and shingle-style cottages from that era still line its streets. The town is compact enough to walk in an afternoon while offering enough beaches, lighthouses, and historic sites to fill a longer visit.
Dock Square is the natural starting point. Shops, galleries, and restaurants cluster along the bridge over the Kennebunk River, and Alisson's Restaurant has been serving chowder and lobster rolls there since 1973. From the square, Ocean Avenue follows the coast for two miles past Spouting Rock and Blowing Cave, the stone St. Ann's Episcopal Church, and Walker's Point, the longtime summer home of the Bush family. The Parsons Way Shore Walk traces the same stretch on foot. Three miles further along, Cape Porpoise is a working lobster harbor with views of Goat Island Lighthouse, dating from 1834. Goose Rocks Beach, off Route 9 north of the village, runs for three miles and stays quieter than the more central Kennebunk Beach. For a deeper dive into local history, the Kennebunkport Historical Society's White Columns, an 1853 Greek Revival house near Dock Square, includes a Bush Family Legacy Museum.
Portland Head Light and Fort Williams Park
The Portland Head Light sits on the shores of Cape Elizabeth, less than twenty minutes south of Portland. The eighty-foot tower has stood on the rocky headlands overlooking Casco Bay since 1791, making it the oldest lighthouse in Maine. It's part of 90-acre Fort Williams Park, where visitors can also walk through old military buildings and grab a bite from the food trucks on site.
The Portland Head Light is still a working lighthouse maintained by the US Coast Guard, so the tower itself is closed to visitors. You can walk the rocky promontory it sits on and stop into the Portland Head Light Museum in the former lightkeeper's house. The area also offers good views of other light stations in Casco Bay, including Spring Point Ledge to the north and Ram Island Ledge to the east. The park contains several abandoned military buildings (Battery Keyes and Battery Blair among them) along with the ruins of Goddard Mansion, once the home of a local businessman. Anyone willing to brave the icy waters can swim at Ship Cove, a small sand beach across from the parking lot.
Brunswick
Brunswick is a small town on the banks of the Androscoggin River, less than thirty minutes north of Portland. Bowdoin College is here, with alumni that include Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The town is a working cultural hub for Midcoast Maine.
The downtown has been recognized by Main Street America for its preservation and revitalization. The aptly named Maine Street holds the Maine State Music Theatre, which stages Broadway-caliber shows and live music events. Cabot Mill Antiques operates out of the Fort Andross Building, a restored textile mill on the river. On the Bowdoin campus, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art holds more than 20,000 pieces in its permanent collection and is free to the public. The Peary-McMillan Arctic Museum next door covers the art and ecology of the Arctic Circle, named for the two Bowdoin alumni who led expeditions to the Arctic. Brunswick has deep Civil War connections too. The homes of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe and Battle of Gettysburg hero Joshua L. Chamberlain are both preserved as museums. For a quiet outdoor stop, drive out to the secluded sand beach at Thomas Point and picnic on the bay.
Where a Maine Day Trip Can Take You
Mount Katahdin in Baxter, Mount Desert Island in Acadia, the Victorian interior at the Victoria Mansion, the dunes at the Desert of Maine: a day trip in Maine can take you to wildly different places without going far. A short drive from any of the state's larger cities reaches most of what's worth seeing.
