PORTLAND, Maine — In the introduction to his new book, Rich Bard gets right to the point. “Are you looking for a place to explore that has incredible natural beauty but hasn’t been turned into a tourist trap?” he asks. “Are you wishing you could hike some trails where the animal prints outnumber the boot prints? Do you want to experience ‘the real Maine’ without the traffic, chain stores, and expensive boutiques of most of coastal Maine?”
If you answered yes to those questions, Bard has the place for you and recommendations for how to get the most out of it. His book, “Beyond Acadia: Exploring the Bold Coast of Down East Maine,” offers an overview of the region and specific suggestions for what to see, do and experience.
Bard knows the territory. He worked as a wildlife biologist for the state and, he writes, “learned quickly that people really love to talk about their favorite places to hike, birdwatch, photograph nature, and so on, and I always took the opportunity to learn something new.” Later he worked as the executive director of the Downeast Coastal Conservancy, a land trust that protects open space in Washington County. He is, in short, not one of those people whose knowledge of Maine comes from a two-week visit once a summer.
The number of people who visit Acadia National Park each year is closing in on four million. Only a fraction of them keep heading east on Route 1 past Ellsworth to the Bold Coast. They don’t know what they’re missing—which is a good thing for the rest of us.