Colonial-Style Hotel One Mile from Acadia National Park

Since its construction in the 1890s, the white clapboard house near the corner of Cottage Street and Holland Avenue has been a lime-and-hair plaster company, a painter's office, and a private residence for a succession of families. Today, it's the Quimby House Inn, where owners Tim and Danielle Ray provide visitors with a taste of New England charm just minutes from the harbor and Acadia National Park.

Past the colonial-style hotel's white and gray exterior, 22 comfortable guest rooms offer quiet respite, with select units boasting cathedral ceilings and faux fireplaces accessorized with faux pokers that are actually baguettes. Floral bedspreads blanket king- or queen-size beds stationed next to plush wingback chairs. The Quimby House Inn is conveniently located within walking distance of the center of town.

Bar Harbor, Maine: Quaint Seaside Village on Coastal Maine Island

Mount Desert Island has been a playground for the country's elite since the Gilded Age, when the era's captains of industry—such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Astors—inhabited summer cottages there. Today's notable residents include media mogul and ladies’ arm-wrestling champ Martha Stewart. The Quimby House Inn sits only a few blocks from the heart of downtown Bar Harbor, an eastern port town that hearkens to a bygone era with pedestrian-friendly streets brimming with boutique stores, restaurants, and specialty shops.

Nearby at the Village Green stop, the Island Explorer shuttle bus provides access to Acadia National Park. Depending on the weather, visitors can cross-country ski, hike a trail, or drive the 3.5-mile road (open on April 14, 2012) to the peak of Cadillac Mountain, which reaches an elevation of 1,530 feet. On a clear day, visibility can stretch 100 miles to encompass Maine's highest mountain, Mount Katahdin, and the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in the distance. Early birds who arrive before dawn during a portion of the winter months can experience the earliest sunrise in the United States.