Planning travel is half the fun. Who said that? If you check Google, you'll find that almost everyone -- at least, every travel writer -- has said it, in so many words. Often in those very words.
But it's true. A variant says that planning a trip is a third of the fun, the actual travel is another third, and the final third is the talking about the trip afterwards. Which is also true.
But what's interesting, and less commented on, is that a traveler can have roughly the same amount of fun planning a weekend trip as planning a travel extravaganza that will last a month or so. Which means, I suppose, that if you had three weeks of vacation a year, you'd maximize your satisfaction by breaking those three weeks into a number of short trips, spaced throughout the year.
I've been planning a four-week combination hike in Scotland and subsequent lakeside loafing at Lake Como for this coming September. I've loved organizing it, and am still loving it. But I've had almost as much fun planning a three-night trip next week to Acadia National Park in Maine.
My interest in Acadia was first aroused at the age of about eleven, when I was an avid stamp collector. I discovered that the U.S. had issued a set of National Park commemoratives in 1934, back when the park system was far smaller than it is today. The series contained ten stamps, ranging from one cent to ten cents; postage was obviously cheaper in those days. The following parks were represented, listed by each stamp's face value.
1 cent -- Yosemite
2 cents --Grand Canyon
3 cents -- Mount Rainier
4 cents --Mesa Verde
5 cents --Yellowstone
6 cents --Crater Lake
7 cents -- Acadia
8 cents -- Zion
9 cents -- Glacier
10 cents -- Great Smoky Mountains
I was geographically sophisticated, for an eleven-year-old, and knew my national parks. I thought. But who/where/what was "Acadia"? I looked it up, and discovered that it was a small smudge on the Maine coast. I remember my reaction -- that people back East needed to have one of them there national park thingees for themselves, and tiny Acadia was about all that could be found or afforded.
I learned that Acadia was on the coast, and I probably saw a photo or two. I had no further interest, other than to add its seven cent stamp, along with the other nine, to my stamp book. (Which I took down from my bookcase and perused in preparation for this little essay.)
It was many decades later that I visited Acadia for the first time. I had attended a nephew's wedding on an island off the Maine coast, somewhat south of Acadia. After the wedding, I decided to poke around the coast in a rental car, and Acadia was one obvious destination. I was impressed! Yes, it's small; yes, the park is a bit fragmented; no, there's no real wilderness. But it was beautiful and intriguing.
And so, last year, celebrating my vaccination and the supposed end of the pandemic, I paid a two-night visit to the park and the adjacent town of Bar Harbor. I vowed to come back soon for a longer stay. And so I plan to do.
But I began this essay talking about preparation. Although Acadia seemed miniscule to my eleven-year-old mind -- and indeed it is: 47,000 acres compared to Yellowstone's 2.24 million acres -- there is a lot to see, a lot of trails to hike, a lot of peaks to climb, and several large lakes to gaze upon. It would take many visits to exhaust the sightseeing possibilities. And most of those sights are well worth viewing more than once. I recall the hiker I met on Mt. Washington who told me that he had come back to climb that same mountain every year for decades, bringing one of his kids with him each time.
So I've been preparing, just as I'm preparing to hike the West Highland Way in Scotland, and to explore the environs of Lake Como in Italy. I have before me a thick guidebook to all the trails in Acadia, put out by the Seattle Mountaineers. I have a beautiful, waterproof, two-sided map of the park. I have the little free map of Acadia that I obtained at the park headquarters a year ago --the same format as the Park Service uses for each of its many properties. And, should my curiosity lead me beyond the park boundaries, I have a waterproof road map of the entire Maine seacoast.
With these items, along with my hiking shoes and a hopefully unneeded raincoat, I will be well-prepared. I fly Monday, May 16 to Portland, Maine, and drive the next day to the park. I'll have about 2 1/2 days at the park and Bar Harbor -- still far too little time. But there will be other visits in future years, I'm convinced.
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P.S. -- The USPS issued a new Acadia National Park stamp in 2016. It's beautiful, in full color, showing a lighthouse overlooking the ocean. But stamps today just aren't the same as when I was a kid. That 1934 seven-center, man, that had class. But I maybe I'm just showing my age.
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