The Well Worn Shoes

Wanderlust Welcome

  • Home
  • Start Here
    • About
    • Contact
    • Work With Me
    • Disclaimer
    • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • National Parks
    • Acadia
    • Yellowstone
    • Great Smoky Mountains
    • Grand Canyon
    • Utah National Parks
    • Badlands
  • Dog Friendly
  • Road Trips
    • One Day In Guides
    • Road Trip Itineraries
  • Destinations
    • United States
      • New England
      • Southwest
      • South
      • Mountain West
      • Midwest & Great Lakes
      • Mid-Atlantic
    • Canada
  • Gear
  • Shop

acadia foliage

Showing the single result Default sorting Sort by popularity Sort by average rating Sort by latest Sort by price: low to high Sort by price: high to low Acadia & Bar Harbor In Fall – Foliage Timing, Closing Dates &...

Read More

Hi! I'm Vanessa, a 30 something, sunset chasing traveler. I'm here to inspire you to travel wherever, whenever, and with whoever you can. My Huskies, Loki and Freya are usually along for the ride. I have a soul that likes to wander, a desire to experience the unknown, and a curiousity to discover things off the beaten path. I hope you'll stick around for awhile!

Join the List

Let's be friends! I know e-mails can suck but mine won't and I promise cute pup photos too!

Connect

Recent Posts

  • Where to Eat in Salem, MA: A Foodie Guide to the Witch City (Plus October Treats)
  • Fall Road Trip Packing List: What To Actually Bring
  • The Ultimate Dog Hiking Gear List For National Parks
  • The Ultimate New England Fall Road Trip: A Six-State Foliage Loop (2026)
  • The Girls Trip Guide to Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

Categories

  • Destinations
  • History
  • National Park Love

Reader Favorites

One Day In Portland, Maine: The Perfect 2026 Itinerary

A craft cocktail at a Bar Harbor brewery bar in Maine — featured image for a guide to the best bars in Bar Harbor, designed to work as a Pinterest preview.

The Complete Guide to the Best Bars in Bar Harbor, Maine

Camping at Acadia National Park with dogs - complete guide featured image showing a Siberian Husky at a misty Seawall Campground campsite with picnic table and fire ring under tall pine trees, covering Blackwoods, Seawall, and Schoodic Woods NPS campgrounds plus dog-friendly RV parks on Mount Desert Island, Maine

Camping At Acadia: The Complete Guide

On the Blog

  • Destinations
  • History
  • National Park Love

Join the List

The Well Worn Shoes is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Connect

POV: You’re standing in the front yard of the man POV: You’re standing in the front yard of the man who gave Acadia to the world, and almost nobody knows it 😍

No circling the Park Loop Road looking for parking. Just old stone steps, the Atlantic, and a piece of Acadia history hiding in plain sight.

At the end you’ll find old stone foundations and steps going down to the rocks. That’s Old Farm, George Dorr’s house. Dorr spent his life and most of his money piecing together the land that became Acadia, then handed it to the country. He died in 1944, and the park took the house down a few years later. The story goes he swam off these rocks every morning well into old age.

So you’re standing in the front yard of the person who’s the reason any of this is public land. There’s no sign making a big deal of it. I think that’s the point.

Dogs on leash are fine. Park in the small lot on Route 3 just outside of Bar Harbor.

Then head back into town for dinner. Table Salt on Main Street if you want to sit down somewhere nice, or the Black Friar if you want a pub, a fire, and a bowl of stew. Both are a few minutes from the trailhead, which is the whole argument for doing Compass Harbor late in the day.

✨🍁✨ Save this one for the day you want Acadia without the Park Loop Road.

Heading to Acadia in the next few weeks? Comment Fall and I’ll send you links to my guide and blog post 🍁✨
If Horseman’s Hollow is on your Sleepy Hollow itin If Horseman’s Hollow is on your Sleepy Hollow itinerary, sit down, we need to talk 🎃👻✨

Sleepy Hollow rebuilt its entire Halloween lineup this year, and most of what’s on the internet about it hasn’t caught up. 

Horseman’s Hollow is gone. Kykuit’s paused. Irving’s ‘Legend’ moved outdoors to Sunnyside. Halloween is a Saturday and so is the parade a week earlier.

I lived in New England for 7 years and drove down almost every October. This is the version I’d hand a friend, checked for 2026: the honest week-by-week crowd calendar, every ticket and the order it sells out, the train and the parking lots, parade night and Halloween night hour by hour, one perfect weekday, and the seven real Legend addresses.

The Sleepy Hollow in October Cheat Sheet ($) is six pages you keep on your phone. The Ultimate Sleepy Hollow Guide ($) is the whole year including itineraries, where to actually sleep (RV included), the dog version, the estates, the real history.

Comment HORSEMAN and I’ll send you both links, plus my blog post One Day In Sleepy Hollow!
📰🗞️ It’s called Newspaper Rock, but there’s no hea 📰🗞️ It’s called Newspaper Rock, but there’s no headline. Just 2,000 years of people adding to the story.

Newspaper Rock, on the road into Canyonlands’ Needles district. Hundreds of figures carved into the desert varnish over roughly 2,000 years. Ancestral Puebloan, Fremont, Navajo, Ute, and people whose names we don’t have. Bighorn, riders on horseback (so some of these are after 1600), six-toed footprints. The Navajo name is Tse’ Hone, “rock that tells a story.”

It’s free. No hike. Most people take the photo and keep driving to the park. Stand there long enough and it stops being a photo op and starts being what it is: 2,000 years of people saying “I was here,” on land that was theirs before it was anyone’s park.

It’s worth remembering that the parks are on their land.

No touching, no chalk, no climbing the fence. 

✨✨Save this for your Utah trip✨✨
We took a random dirt road in Idaho with no plan, We took a random dirt road in Idaho with no plan, no destination, and 3 dogs who have opinions. Obviously, we had a great time. 😂

Mud Lake, Idaho. A two-track through the sagebrush, antelope in the distance, a sky that looked like that, and the Harvest Moon rising pink on the other side while we were still watching the sunset.

Not another person in sight. Nothing on the itinerary. Absolutely nowhere we needed to be.

And honestly? This is the whole point of living the lifestyle we do! But we we’ve been doing this since our 3rd date 💚🌲

The national parks are incredible. But some of our favorite memories happen on roads with no signs, no crowds, and no idea where we’re going.

Just us, the dogs, and a whole lot of dirt roads left to explore.

Want more of these little nowhere adventures? Because we’ve got a lot of dirt roads. 🤙
🏔️ Grand Teton and I had our second date yesterday 🏔️ Grand Teton and I had our second date yesterday. MUCH better than the first one in August 😂

The weather? Not exactly cooperating. Definitely not what most would consider ideal. But we decided to go anyway, because waiting for perfect conditions is a great way to miss the good stuff.

3.8 million people visit this park every year, and most show up June through September. We rolled through the second week of October and had  Oxbow Bend almost to ourselves under a storm.

A rainbow over the highway into Jackson. The Snake River with empty pullouts. A mule deer buck strolling through like he paid rent. (The rut is starting, and the boys are absolutely not thinking clearly.)

October means half the services are closed, the Jenny Lake shuttle is done, and snow is very much on the table. But trade the summer crowds for a little weather drama? I’ll take my chances.

Inner Park Road and Moose-Wilson Road (closed already) close for the season November 1, so there’s still time to catch the quieter side of the Tetons.

Save this for next October, or go this week. Just don’t wait for a perfect forecast. 🌈
Follow on Instagram

Copyright © 2026 The Well Worn Shoes · Theme by 17th Avenue