I was ten years old when I first went to Northeast Harbor. We had taken a trip to Bar Harbor and were exploring Acadia National Park when we got lost. It is difficult to truly get lost in the area, as Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are on an island. But we were lost, and ended up wandering around a secluded corner of the island. Eventually we stumbled into a small village that looked like a Hollywood movie set for a New England coastal town. This was Northeast Harbor.

Since no one was in a particularly good mood, we quickly left town and found our way back to Acadia and Bar Harbor. Later, after we had returned back to Boston, my parents mentioned how nice that secluded little picture-perfect village was, and that maybe we should stay there sometime.

More than twenty-five years later, I am still making annual trips to Northeast Harbor. It has become a tradition to go up there on Memorial Day, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends, and sometimes both.

The first thing that one notices about Northeast Harbor is its laid-back, charming downtown area. It consists of one street, with shops and head-in parking on one side. The other side is a mixture of woods and scattered homes and shops. The shops are all small mom-and-pop businesses, with not a McDonald