BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 5, 2023
The Schoodic Peninsula, on the eastern side of Frenchman Bay, has long been considered the quiet part of Acadia National Park, far removed from the summer crowds that fill parking lots of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island. But this year the Schoodic section of the park, and its abutting towns of Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor, don’t quite resemble the sparse locales that many residents remember from a few years ago. The Schoodic Peninsula is on pace to have its busiest summer ever — busier even than 2021, when Acadia as a whole surpassed 4 million visits for the first time in its 107-year history. That’s setting it apart from the portion of Acadia on MDI, where visits have remained high but leveled off some.