In Bar Harbor proper, the Harborside Hotel is hard to beat for kid-friendliness. They even have dedicated family rooms with a bunk-bed sleeping space tucked inside a larger king room. The heated pools are great for early-summer visits when the ocean is still knock-the-wind-out-of-you cold, and the resort is just steps from the Bar Island sandbar, which you can cross on foot at low tide.

A visit to Sherman’s—a Bar Harbor mainstay since 1886, with a hefty selection of toys and games in addition to books—is always a must. Maine-based children’s books make great souvenirs—we love Mrs. Rumphius and The Circus Ship, and you can’t go wrong with a Robert McCloskey classic such as Blueberries for Sal or One Morning in Maine.

Acadia’s toughest hikes get all the fanfare, but for a low-key jaunt, I love this quiet trail at the southern tip of Mount Desert Island. It’s a classic coastal Maine landscape through a moss-covered spruce forest, with granite outcroppings, the occasional stony cove, and an easy path with signage that helps kids engage with their surroundings. Rocky tide pools are ripe for exploration, and at 1.4 miles, it’s manageable even for little legs.

My kid may be an equal-opportunity ice cream lover, but I have more discerning tastes, and the mass-produced stuff from Gifford’s leaves me cold. This place does small-batch, made-from-scratch ice cream in rad flavors such as blackstrap banana and blueberry sour cream crumble. We like to take a divide-and-conquer approach—one adult stands in line, the other kills time with the kiddo in the Village Green across the street.

You can’t leave Maine without eating a lobster roll, but it’s easy to get decision paralysis because there’s a quaint lobster shack every ten feet. This is the place you want to go. There’s a covered, heated patio for drizzly days, a lawn where kids can run wild, and grilled cheese on the menu for picky eaters. And the lobster roll? Sublime. Griddled bread, not too much mayo, hefty chunks of meat. Just perfect.

My new vacation M.O. has me exceedingly grateful for Cafe This Way, where you can snag a table and a strong cup of coffee at 6:30 in the morning, right when the kids wake up. The early opening is just a bonus—the blueberry pancakes, with their perfectly frizzled edges and pillowy centers, are the real reason there’s a line out the door.

My toddler isn’t exactly ready for scrambling up cliffs yet, so this 57-mile network of car-free carriage roads has become our favorite way to explore the interior of the park. There are a handful of local companies that rent out bikes, plus child trailers or tag-along mounts. Some of the carriage roads—like the route from Eagle Lake to Breakneck Pond—are even stroller-friendly.