Bar Harbor Hostel Acadia National Park ANP National Parks Maine State Parks Bar Harbour Mount Desert Island MDI COA C.O.A. College of the Atlantic. Located near Bangor Camden Rockland Rockport Southwest Harbor Northeast Harbor Bass Harbor ME New England North East Coast Coastal Towns U.S. US America United States. Activities include backpacking, backpackers hiking rock climbing cycling biking bicycling walk trekking bird watching birding ocean Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Sea Forest mountains lakes CAT Ferry Coastal Maine Baxter State Park Katahdin lobsters blueberries down east maine

For more than 25 years, the Mount Desert Island Youth Hostel has welcomed visitors who have come to coastal Maine to enjoy the Down East areas of ‘Vacationland,’ including Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We are fortunate to be located in an area where opportunities abound for hiking, biking, canoeing, ocean kayaking, sailing, and whale-watching, among other outdoor pursuits.
    Nationally, the hostel is affiliated with the Hostelling International — American Youth Hostels (HI-AYH) organization, and licensed and inspected by that group’s Eastern New England Council.
    Locally, the hostel was associated with the Mount Desert Island Council of Churches, when that group existed in the 1980s.
    Despite its success, and popularity, until now the Mount Desert Island Youth Hostel has never had a permanent home. For the last decade or so it has been housed in Bar Harbor, during the summertime, in the parish building of St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church. Because that building also is used as a pre-school, the hostel season has been limited to mid-June through Labor Day.
    With the purchase of our own building last fall, on Lower Main Street in Bar Harbor, we hope to extend our season, increase our presence in the area, and provide a greater range of services to the many international and North American visitors who come to our part of Maine.
    When our hostel opened, six other hostels existed in Maine, in towns like Monson, Carmel, and Portland. Currently we are the only HI-AYH hostel remaining in the state.