Sand Beach and Great Head
The Sand Beach area of Acadia National Park is on Park Loop Road which on the map of MDA I provided in my first post is on the southeast side of the island. It’s just a bit south of Bar Harbor.
One would usually access this area at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center road and wind though the park to the park pass checkpoint. There are other access points but all must pass the park pass checkpoint.
We like to start at Hulls cove because the winding park loop road goes by small ponds and also along ridge lines with a view of Frenchman Bay. It also goes by the Precipice Trail for Mt. Champlain. This trail is often closed in the spring to mid-summer as it’s a breeding area for peregrine falcons.
Sand Beach is a cove that sits between the rest of Park Loop Road and a peninsula on the east called Great Head.
Sand Beach actually isn’t sand at all. Since the last glacial period melted sand beach has been built up over the thousands of years by sea shells smashed and crushed on the shore. Close inspection of the “sand” reveals the crushed seashells.
Few people actually swim at Sand Beach. Mostly people make sand castles or venture into the water just enough to experience the waves crashing in on a good day. The water temperature in the summer hardly reaches 55 degrees so those who do enter don’t usually stay in very long.
In this photo Park Loop Road section called Ocean Drive winds along the rocky coast.
But for now, the vicinity of the beach is particularly pretty and interesting if you look back.
Behind Sand Beach is the lagoon. This lagoon gets fresh water coming down from streams off the mountains in the background and salt water which can flood the lagoon at high tide. So, the lagoon is brackish water.
Where the lagoon meets the ocean is always changing. Each year to will go down to the beach just to see how the sand has moved. In the photo above water from the waves is flowing back into the lagoon. At other times the water from the lagoon will flow into the sea.
Behind the lagoon the most prominent feature is that small mountain called the Beehive. It’s a pretty difficult climb up the face of the Beehive and in many places, there are steel rungs that have been place to allow “safe” passage up the face. Fortunately, there are other ways up the beehive including hiking around it and going up the back side.
But as I mentioned, that connection from the lagoon and the ocean is always changing. In this photo below the water has cut a deep stream though the sand and is revealing the rocks that live under the sand.
But every winter this all gets rearranged again.
There are grassy dunes between the beach and the lagoon and those areas are off limits due to the fragile nature of the dunes. But in this photo, it’s possible to see not just the Beehive but also Mt. Champlain to the north.
One of my favorite hikes is to start just south of the beehive and climb up to what’s called the Bowl. The bowl is a sizable pond a good several hundred feet above the ocean and is locked in by the beehive on one side and Mt. Champlain on the other. It’s a popular place for some people to take a nice swim.
From the top of the Beehive there are great views of the beach and the whole area. This photo below shows the beach, the lagoon in back and the western side of Great Head which is a peninsula that forms the eastern side of Sand beach. Also, in the top right of the photo there is a partial view of a small rock island called Old Soaker. I guess it’s called Old Soaker because it gets soaked. But there are usually a ton of gulls and cormorants hanging out there.
Great Head is a fun short hike. Accessing it from the far side of sand beach one quickly goes up the rocky slope to see great views again of Sand Beach and the area behind. This photo that I took in the fall also shows the beehive and the northern end of Mt. Gorham which follows along Ocean Drive giving nice views from that area.
The Great Head Trail goes along the ocean side of Great head where one can go out of on the rocks and look down at the ocean crashing into them. Most of the trail is likely around 50 feet above sea level butt there are places where one can climb down to the ocean but be aware of the large waves as it’s easy to get carried off.
After about a half hour going around the southern tip of Great Head one reaches the summit.
The summit itself is not too spectacular but walking off to the east various vistas open up.
About 20 yards from the summit one can look down across the southern section of Frenchman Bay looking east and see the island that holds Egg Light. Egg Light some people call the ugliest lighthouse on the east coast. But on a foggy day it’s horn blasts out and I can even hear it back at the house. Across from Egg Light is the shore of Schoodic Peninsula. Part of Schoodic is private land and the southern tip is part of Acadia. I’ll be posting photos of Schoodic later on in this series.
Also, a short walk from the summit there are other views looking north along the eastern side of Frenchman Bay. This view below shows the rocky coast as well as several of the islands in the bay. In the very distance at the top right one can see Mt. Schoodic on the mainland. It’s a hike that we do frequently and when I get to that post, I’ll show some pictures of the views one has of Frenchman Bay from the summit of Mt. Schoodic.
There are several ways to get back to the beach from the summit of Great Head. Several wind back into the woods but we usually go back the way we came as the views are so nice. One never knows when getting back to sand beach if the fog will have at least temporarily come in.
The next post will continue along the Ocean Drive section of Park Loop road and the rocky coastline.