How to Find Out What’s Happening at Acadia

Most of us leave behind the to-do list while on vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine.  A few however, feel that they must have one to make the most of their precious time while on vacation.  Now doing things you love may include a game of golf or tennis, a walk in the woods, a bike ride down a glorious hill or a dip in the warm waters with the rocks towering above your head.  However it could also include listening to your favorite brass quartet, or hearing piano jazz, or dancing with a live contra band and 30 other folks that love to dance.

How can you find out what is happening in the weeks before you arrive so that you can time your visit to grab the best of both worlds?   There are three great sources that detail what’s happening months ahead of time.

The first is community calendars.  There are four sources of community calendars, the local weekly newspapers (Ellsworth American, Bar Harbor Times) publish one, usually only the current week ahead, but that is useful.   Our community radio station, WERU-FM (89.9) has a community calendar at WERU.org that previews a month’s activities.   Maine Public Broadcasting Network also has a state-wide calendar of activities that is searchable and wide ranging.  Finally, don’t forget College of the Atlantic’s events calendar.

Second,  go to the source of the activity.   If it’s music you are interested in and you love the steel drum music of Flash in the Pans, check out their website and see where they will be performing.  In addition, town websites can be useful for information on activities and programs.  Read about Southwest Harbor’s festivals at their Chamber of Commerce website.  Libraries are great sources of information, don’t pass up the librarians themselves.   Theaters and nightspots often have their own calendars posted on their websites.  For a list of these check out our recent post Finding Culture in Downeast Maine.

Third: Regional magazines do a good job of highlighting information, Down East and Yankee magazines are useful for our area.   Folk magazine Dirty Linen has a state by state performance calendar here.  Don’t forget that the libraries carry last year’s issues which will report on recurring festivals. Maine has some big annual festivals, like the marvelous North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland in July, classical Bar Harbor Music Festival also in July, the Bar Harbor Jazz Festival in mid August and  Bangor’s American Folk Festival late in August.