Before the snow flies

Parking lots at Wal-Mart, The Home Depot and the malls were jammed over the weekend. Friday was the country’s biggest shopping day, and people had to make up for the closings of the big stores on Thursday and get started with purchases for the year-end holidays.

Still, some folks managed quieter outings in Acadia National Park. Many more chances for a visit can be expected as we coast into late fall. Traffic is easy, now that most of the summer visitors have left. The leaves have fallen, freeing up vistas of rocky cliffs, sapphire lakes and the ocean. Part of the Park Loop road will be open all winter, with its views of the Schoodic peninsula and the offshore islands. Still open is the road up Cadillac Mountain, where on a clear day you can see Mount Katahdin and sometimes even the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

Afoot, there is the trail alongside the loop road, with its line of pitch pines, said to be the only trees that can survive winter winds on those oceanfront crags. If the tide is

pretty well out and a good surf is running you may catch the booming of Thunder Hole. You can get a good look, since the wardens haven’t yet closed off the lower observation platforms.

The carriage roads are all open, and for more ambitious hikers there are trails ranging from the relatively easy, like Day Mountain and Great Head, to strenuous climbs up Sargent and Penobscot mountains.

If you think the season has ended for Maine’s crown jewel of a national park, you will be missing something special.