"Stay with a Bar Harbor Local"

Here at the Shorepath Cottage, now under Lisabeth Chester's very able second generation management, we offer amenities (besides the extra special touches) that you can only find with folks who have known, traversed and loved this island all their lives. These are "gifts" we offer our guests that are based on our knowledge of the various eateries, theatre and concerts, museums, antique shops, merchants, the back roads, and the hidden away treasures that are not common knowledge, but can make your vacation here truly wonderful and memorable.

A concierge or seasonal worker is not likely to tell you the best place to rent a bike, the place which is not likely to send you off with one that will break down on the carriage trails in the park. We will provide you with windbreakers, hats and gloves which you might need on a whale watch when you are out to sea and encounter a strong cold wind.

If you want to travel back home with specially packaged frozen blueberries we will take you (sworn to secrecy) to fields only the locals know. With a special blueberry rake we provide (the kind used to harvest commercially one of Maine's most famous products), you can rake up heaps of the world's best and sweetest anti-oxidants from bushes that extend as far as the eye can see.

Since we are familiar with all the better local restaurants and listen carefully to the experiences our guest share at the breakfast table, we can steer you in the right direction, depending upon the menu, the ambiance, and the price you prefer. We can send you in the direction of the best lobster dinner, fish chowder, and other seafood dishes as well as the wonderful vegetarian meals available here on the island. If you are vacationing as a family, we will advise as to the restaurants where you (and the other guests) will be most comfortable. And none of our guests ever refuse the offer to take a bag with a few of our muffins, which are especially delicious after a hike to the top of a mountain in the park.

If you wish to enjoy some warmer fresh water swimming off the beaten track where you will probably have the lake all to yourselves, we can give you directions to the place where the kids used to go skinny dipping. The skinny dippers are long gone, hard at work being parents and grandparents, but the lake is as beautiful as ever with clear water down to a sandy bottom and surrounded all around by pine trees.

Your pleasure is our business, so we are delighted to keep you happy, hoping you will return to this extraordinary island... and to us!