*Many thanks to my friend Hope Rowan – A Maine Cartographer and GIS Specialist for many of these suggestions.*

An underrate coastal beachy paradise, in my mind, the Blue Peninsula has a lot of neat things to offer and after you’ve made it to the neighboring must-see, but touristy and overrated, area of Mount Desert Island, and had your fill of Acadia, it’s time to go here. I decided for this trip (actually taken in June 2025, but quite a procrastinated post) to stay in Ellsworth and casually made trips down from there. I was semi limited on time since I had just a day or two before I wandered to Bangor, so i’m sure there are brilliant places I missed – please comment or message suggestions for next time! I broke it up into two parts since I did this in 2 different days, although I ended up in Bangor as a launch point for the second day.

So I think the best parts of this were swimming at “The Nub” park in Blue Hill, wandering to the surprisingly quaint Brooklin General Store and then of course Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies before you finish off with a little jaunt to Stonington. Sorry, didn’t take a lot of pictures of some places since I was too busy enjoying the ocean! Stonington is a great little town with an ice cream place, a fantastic coffee shop and of course a few lobster restaurants.

The Nub

Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies

An “unexpected destination on deer isle” this little eclectic campus is a wild playground town/village of amazing metal sculptures by a man named Peter Beerit. I think they also sell actual jams and jellies…. But most of the people i saw went to gander at this small village of metal; it’s definitely worth the visit, granted, I didn’t stay long because it was a thousand degrees of a heat wave outside.

Stonington – A town of barely 1000

Points of interest: 44 North Coffee, Stonington Lobster Co-Op, Stonington Ice Cream, 27 Fathoms Waterfront Grille.

Sand beach, Sylvester’s cove and barred island preserve

These are definitely some of the best beaches/coves I’ve seen in Maine purely from the remoteness. On a mid-June weekday even they weren’t very busy and it was easy to feel isolated. Based on that I’d go back! The Barred Island Preserve Trail is one thing very high on my list I didn’t get to do… Because the bugs were getting to me that day, but definitely would recommend from talking to a few people going around sunset when it’s LOW TIDE because you can’t make it out across the sand bar.