RVs in Acadia

Those enormous bus-sized mobile homes, often with an ordinary car tethered on behind, caused some big problems in Acadia National Park in the season now drawing to a close.

W. Kent Olson, president of Friends of Acadia, reports one such encounter. A 50-foot behemoth (not counting the car it was trailing) tried to make a left turn last August from Route 233 into the Cadillac Mountain entrance of the park. It couldn’t make the turn, and it couldn’t back up. Fifteen cars were held up in the single lane. Fortunately, a park ranger arrived and was able to unsnarl the mess in ten minutes, or the blockage would have lasted a lot longer.

Writing in the association’s journal, Olson predicts more and worse trouble unless the park soon sets limits on the use of the Loop Road and the Cadillac, Stanley Brook and Duck Brook roads.

He says that the big so-called recreational vehicles should at least pay a premium entry fee. His preferred solution is to bar all vehicles over 18 feet long from park roads for the summer season.

The park superintendent, Paul Haertel, has a few horror stories of his own. He was startled the other day to see a line of white material on the underside of the Stanley Brook bridge. On examination, he found that one of the monsters had scraped off part of its roof in trying to negotiate the bridge.

Haertel says he sympathizes with Olson’s view but sees some objections to his proposed solution. Barring a class of vehicle from park roads would require a formal rule-making process, with time allowed for public comment. That would mean “a lot of debate,” says Haertel.

The superintendent hopes, instead, that voluntary action by drivers of the big rigs will work better than a formal ban. Park employees have been advising drivers to leave their vehicles outside the park and use cars or buses. Park representatives passed that word to drivers at a huge mobile home convention in Brunswick, and many of them parked at special areas in the Bangor area instead of trying to bring them into the park.

Haertel points out that the park’s new transportation system added nine new propane-powered Explorer buses this year to its free transportation system, for a total of 17. A third phase, which should be in place within five years, will involve establishing special parking areas in the vicinity of Mount Desert Island, so that visitors can leave their cars and mobile homes outside and ride the free buses into the park. If voluntary methods don’t work, then it will be time to turn to Olson’s harsher course.