Acadia in spring: what opens when, April to June 2027

Acadia’s spring starts on 15 April, when the Park Service opens the Park Loop Road to cars again after the winter, and it runs until late June, when the whole Island Explorer is on the road and peak season has begun. In between, the park opens a piece at a time: visitor centers and the first campground at the start of May, the unpaved roads in mid-May, the Cadillac reservation and the first buses later in May, and the rest in June.

This page picks up where Acadia in winter ends. It is the park from April to June 2027: which dates are already fixed, which ones the Park Service and the bus operator have not posted yet, and when each of those usually falls.

What is set for 2027, and what is not

A few spring dates are fixed by standing rules, and they hold for 2027:

The road dates are the Park Service’s hours and seasons table and winter page, which close the Loop Road to cars “from Dec 1 to April 14” every year; the campsite releases follow the park’s camping rules; the parking dates are the town’s parking page.

Not posted yet for 2027: the Cadillac vehicle reservation season, the opening dates of the campgrounds, visitor centers and park stores, the Island Explorer’s season, the carriage roads’ mud-season closure and reopening, and the national fee-free days. Each section below gives the 2026 date, which is the best guide until the 2027 one appears, and says where the 2027 date will be posted.

The Park Service’s spring announcement is the one to watch for. In 2026 it came out on 14 April, the day before the Loop Road reopened, as What to expect this spring and summer, and it carried the bus start, the carriage-road status, the trail closures and two road closures for construction.

April: the roads open, and little else

On 15 April cars return to the whole Park Loop Road, the one-way section past Sand Beach and the road up Cadillac included, after four and a half months when only Ocean Drive and the road to Jordan Pond were open to them. Echo Lake Beach and the Thompson Island picnic area open the same day. That is most of April’s news.

What is still shut in April:

• Every campground. The first, Blackwoods, opened on 1 May in 2026.
• Every visitor center. Hulls Cove opened on 1 May in 2026. Passes are sold all year at the entrance station on the Loop Road at Schooner Head Road and at the automated machines (below).
• The carriage roads, most years. In both 2025 and 2026 mud season closed them from mid-March until at least late April (below).
• Three cliff trails, closed for nesting peregrine falcons (below).
• The bus. No Island Explorer runs in April, so an April trip is a car trip.

What April has is room: 95,200 recreation visits in April 2025, against 323,243 in May and 797,030 in July, by the Park Service’s visitor use statistics. In 2026 the first business in the park to open was the Jordan Pond House gift store, on 23 April by the Park Service’s table.

Trails can still hold ice early in the spring. The Park Service’s mud-season notice tells hikers to be prepared for icy conditions and to carry traction devices for their shoes, and anyone walking a section of road still closed to cars to watch for park vehicles and lingering snow, ice and winter storm debris.

The roads: 15 April and 15 May

The Park Service gives the Loop Road’s closure as “Dec 1 to April 14”, weather permitting, every year, so the 2027 reopening is Thursday 15 April. The unpaved roads follow on Saturday 15 May. On the west side of the island those include Seal Cove Road, Western Mountain Road and Lurvey Spring Road, which the Park Service also opens to bikes, with a warning about deep ruts that cross the whole width of the road and downed wood.

Work can hold a section shut past 15 April. In 2026 two did:

• Cadillac’s summit road stayed closed to all uses through 30 April, for the East-West Connector Trail, a paved path beside the road between the two summit parking areas. Friends of Acadia, which is paying for it, said in March 2026 that construction would continue through the spring, pause for the busy summer and resume in the fall.
• The Loop Road between Kebo Street and Sieur de Monts was closed to all uses through 12 June, for a culvert replacement and a sewer connection, except over Memorial Day weekend.

Whether any work holds a road in spring 2027 has not been announced. The Park Service posts closures on its Current Conditions page, and the spring release names the big ones.

Cadillac: open from 15 April, and when the reservation starts

The summit road opens to cars with the rest of the Loop Road, so from 15 April you can drive up Cadillac again. Until the vehicle reservation season starts, you need no reservation, only the park pass. In 2026, with the summit road shut for construction until 30 April, that free window was 1 to 19 May.

The 2026 reservation season is 20 May to 25 October. A reservation costs $6 per vehicle, is sold only online at recreation.gov and never at the park, and comes in two releases, both at 10 a.m. Eastern: 30 percent of each day’s sunrise and daytime reservations go on sale 90 days ahead and the other 70 percent two days ahead. For the first morning of the 2026 season, 20 May, the 90-day release came on 19 February.

The 2026 entry windows for late spring, from the Park Service’s vehicle reservations page:

The limits are one sunrise reservation per vehicle every seven days and one daytime reservation a day, and the road closes to vehicles at 9 p.m.

The 2027 season is not posted. The 2026 dates stood on the Park Service’s reservations page by 25 November 2025, the date it was last updated, so the 2027 ones may appear around the same time. The reservations page has the full mechanics and will carry the 2027 dates when they are out. If 2027’s season again starts around 20 May, its first 90-day release comes around 20 February.

On foot, by bike or by taxi you need no reservation at any time. The North Ridge Trail is 4.4 miles round trip, and the Island Explorer does not go to the summit.

Mud season and the carriage roads

The carriage roads are the one part of the park whose spring reopening has no date. In the Park Service’s words on its biking page, they “often close to all traffic during mud season, typically March and April.” Thawing ground and spring rain soften the gravel, and walking, biking or riding a horse on it then leaves ruts and potholes that channel water and wash the surface out. The Park Service reopens them “once the gravel surface dries out and becomes firm enough to prevent damage”.

The last three years:

How it is announced. The closure comes as a Park Service news release in March (2025’s). The reopening comes as a short Park Service notice, which Friends of Acadia and the local news pass on. The 2026 one, as Bar Harbor Story reposted it on 30 April, thanked visitors for respecting “our annual closure” and reminded riders that only Class 1 e-bikes are allowed. In 2025 the roads reopened to walkers first, because, as Friends of Acadia put it on 22 April, they were “dry enough for pedestrians” but needed “to dry a little more for bicycling and riding horses.” The Park Service points riders to go.nps.gov/AcadiaAlerts for temporary closures.

For a trip in April, plan on the carriage roads being shut, and treat an open one as a bonus. The carriage roads page has the riding rules, the e-bike class and the bike racks on the bus.

Falcons: three cliff trails closed from 1 March

Every year the Park Service closes the cliffs where peregrine falcons nest. In 2026 the Jordan Cliffs, Precipice and Valley Cove trails closed on 1 March, with the Precipice parking lot shut to cars, and by the 14 April release Penobscot East Trail was closed as well. The trails reopen “once park resource managers determine it is safe to do so”, which moves with the birds from year to year; there is no set date. In 2025 three pairs nested on Acadia’s cliffs.

So a spring trip should not be built around the Precipice. The Beehive, the other iron-rung climb, was not one of the 2026 falcon closures.

Three other closures are in force now, posted in August and September 2026 with no end date: the southern section of Ocean Path, from the trailhead across from the Otter Point parking lot to the trail’s end; the eastern section of the Beech Mountain Loop Trail; and Schoodic Mountain Road. Check Current Conditions before a spring trip for whether they have reopened.

May: the park opens

Most of the park opens in May. The 2026 dates, from the Park Service’s hours and seasons table and the operators’ own pages; 2027’s have not been posted, and the table on the Park Service’s hours page is where they will appear.

By the end of May the park has nearly everything a summer visitor uses except the full bus network and the Sieur de Monts Nature Center. Black flies arrive in May too (below).

The Jordan Pond House restaurant takes some reservations on Resy, but its own site says most tables are kept for guests who walk in, with an average wait of 40 minutes in peak season.

Tours restart in May. Acadia National Park Tours, which runs narrated bus tours of the park from Bar Harbor, gives its season as “mid-May through mid-October”, and Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. runs its whale watch from late May to early October. The bus tours page compares the park tours, and the whale watching page the trips at sea.

Carriage rides restart in late May. Acadia by Carriage, the park’s only horse-drawn carriage operator, ran its 2026 season from 23 May by its own dates, a day before the Park Service’s table above. The carriage rides page has its prices and its two tours from Wildwood Stables.

The Island Explorer

The free bus has not posted its 2027 season. In 2026 the operator, Downeast Transportation, ran it in two stages, by its service calendar:

• From 20 May 2026, the Gateway Center, Loop Road and Schoodic routes, which the Park Service announced as “new spring service”.
• From 23 June 2026, every other route, through 12 October.

The Loop Road route is the one that reaches Sand Beach, Thunder Hole and Jordan Pond, so from late May a car-free day on the east side was possible in 2026, a month before the rest of the network.

Where to look for 2027: the operator’s site at exploreacadia.com, which in October 2026 still carried the 2026 calendar and was recruiting drivers for the 2027 season, and the Park Service’s spring release, which in 2026 announced the 20 May start. The Island Explorer page has the routes and the bike racks, and will carry the 2027 dates.

Campgrounds: when they open, and when to book

There is no camping anywhere in Acadia until the first campground opens in May. The 2026 openings, from the Park Service’s hours table and Recreation.gov:

The release rule. For Blackwoods, Seawall and Schoodic Woods, 90 percent of sites are released six months ahead on the first of each month at 10 a.m. EST, a whole month at a time, and the other 10 percent at 10 a.m. 14 days before each arrival date. Same-day reservations are sold on Recreation.gov when a site is free. Nothing is sold at the campground office. Duck Harbor’s five lean-tos are released all at once, at 10 a.m. on 1 April, and boat service there is limited at the start of its season.

The 2027 opening dates are not posted yet. The Park Service’s table lists 2026’s; the 2027 calendar on Recreation.gov will show which nights are on sale once each month is released. The campground page has the full rules, the site counts and the prices.

Memorial Day weekend, 29–31 May 2027

Memorial Day 2027 is Monday 31 May, so the long weekend is Saturday 29 to Monday 31 May.

For campers, it is where the Park Service’s high season starts. The park’s camping limit — a combined 14 nights across all its campgrounds — runs from the Friday of Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day, so it begins counting on Friday 28 May 2027. In 2026 the park reopened a section of the Loop Road that was closed for construction just for the holiday weekend.

What to plan for:

• Campsites for the weekend are May nights, so they go on sale at 10 a.m. EST on 1 December 2026, with the 14-day release in mid-May.
• Cadillac: in 2026 the reservation season began on 20 May, the week before the holiday. If 2027’s starts at a similar time, the weekend falls inside it, and under 2026’s rules its reservations go on sale 90 days and two days ahead.
• The bus: in 2026 the first three routes were running by the holiday.
• Fees: Memorial Day was a fee-free day in 2026, for US citizens and residents only. The 2027 list of fee-free days is not out yet.

Crowds. By the Park Service’s monthly counts, May is far quieter than summer: 323,243 recreation visits in May 2025, against 631,333 in June and 797,030 in July. A monthly count does not show a single weekend, so for the holiday plan as for any busy day. The Park Service’s advice for those is to arrive before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m., since most of the congestion comes in the middle of the day, and to have a back-up plan when a lot is full. In peak season the Sand Beach lot is routinely full by 9 a.m., and Jordan Pond, the Eagle Lake carriage road entrance on Route 233 and Echo Lake fill too. The Park Service lists every one of them as reachable on the Island Explorer, though in 2026 only three of its routes ran before 23 June.

June: everything open

June is when the park runs at full strength. The Park Service puts peak season at “typically from June into September”, and June 2025 brought 631,333 recreation visits, nearly twice May’s.

Mid-June brings the year’s earliest sunrise on Cadillac, at about 4:48 a.m., which makes a sunrise reservation a 4 a.m. start. Black flies are still about.

Black flies

Maine’s black flies are a spring fact, and the main one a May or June trip has to plan around.

When. “May and June are the big time for black flies and most just produce one generation and then are gone,” Charlene Donahue, an entomologist with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, told the Bangor Daily News; one species keeps breeding and is “around until the frost sets in in the late fall.” Jim Dill, of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, told Spectrum News in 2025 that the old black fly season ran “from the middle of May maybe to the middle of June”, and that cleaner streams have brought more species: “Now we have basically black flies from early in the spring until November.”

When they bite. In the daytime, and in a narrow band of warmth. Donahue puts it at about the 60s: “If it’s cooler than that, they don’t bite. But the minute it warms up and the sun comes out, all of a sudden they are there and biting.” Mosquitoes take over at dawn and dusk. Only the females bite, and black flies breed only in clean running water.

What works. University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s repellent fact sheet lists DEET and picaridin as working on black flies, and oil of lemon eucalyptus as a plant-based option that works for a shorter time. Dill’s advice is repellent, covered skin and a head net, and he warns that “people coming to visit Maine who don’t live in Maine can really react to black fly bites.” Black flies in the United States do not carry disease to people.

The Park Service’s spring advice is the same idea: “Wear light-colored clothing, long sleeve shirts, and long pants for protection.”

Weather and daylight

The Park Service gives spring as “Foggy; 30–70 F”, on its weather page, and warns that the weather can change quickly and that the summits can be drastically different from Bar Harbor. A warm afternoon in town says little about the top of Cadillac at 5 a.m.

Sunrise and sunset for Cadillac’s coordinates, from the US Naval Observatory, in Eastern Daylight Time:

By June the days run more than 15 hours, which is the season’s real gift: a start at first light beats the midday congestion, and the light lasts past 8 p.m.

Passes and fees

A pass is required all year, for everyone 16 and over. In 2026 it is $35 per private vehicle for seven days, $30 for a motorcycle and $20 a person on foot or by bike, and non-US residents aged 16 and over pay a $100 nonresident fee on top, unless they are admitted with an annual or America the Beautiful pass. The park takes no cash. In spring, before the visitor centers open, passes are sold at the entrance station on the Loop Road at Schooner Head Road, at the automated machines at Hulls Cove, the Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton and the Schoodic Institute, and online at recreation.gov.

In 2026 two spring days were fee-free for US citizens and residents: Memorial Day, 25 May, and Flag Day, 14 June. The Park Service’s fee-free page will list 2027’s. The fees page has every pass and the arithmetic for non-US visitors.

Where to stay in spring

Bar Harbor hotels that close for the winter reopen on their own dates in spring: last winter several reopened on 13 March and one on 1 May. The off-season hotels page has them hotel by hotel. In April and early May, with no bus, any base is a driving base, and Ellsworth’s lower prices give up nothing.

From the start of the Cadillac reservation season, Bar Harbor earns its price. The larger share of reservations, 70 percent, is released at 10 a.m. two days ahead, so anyone already in town gets a fresh try every morning. Once the bus is running, Bar Harbor is its hub. Where to stay near Acadia compares the towns in full.