Friday, March 12th, 2010

Family camping in Maine’s Acadia National Park

The Parent Bloggers Network is asking for parent bloggers to post about family vacations in support of their campaign blast for PickPackGo, a website where you can lookup rental vacation homes for your family. We haven’t tried renting a house for a vacation yet, but it is something we’ve discussed doing in the future.

Our favorite family vacation is camping at Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor in Maine. Heather and I first went when we were dating in college. After we got married and starting having kids we saw no reason to stop going every other summer. We took Ethan when he was 10 months old and Ben when he was a year old. The only thing we changed was the size of our tent.

This park is a great place for a laid back vacation. We spent most days just exploring areas on our own schedule. The rocky shorelines provide a natural jungle gym and their are numerous trails to explore at your own pace. We always go blueberry picking so we can make pancakes for breakfast. Our last visit we decided to try some of the boat tours and really loved the lobster boat tour and Diver Ed’s Dive-In Theater.

I’ve heard other people complain about camping with the kids, but we found it real easy. I think the key is that we spent little time actually at the campsite. The occasional breakfast and campfire dinner, but otherwise we would return after dark just to use our tent to sleep. After a day running around the park we had no trouble getting the kids to sleep. Eating out a lot can be expensive, but we also saved a lot of money by camping rather than staying in a hotel. We also brought along plenty of PB&J ingredients for picnics.

Acadia is a beautiful island with tons of shoreline to explore. Our kids spent hours climbing the rocks…