The budget issues in Washington D.C. are hitting close to home again. Looks like parts of Acadia National Park will open late this year and they will look at program cutbacks. Acadia is facing a $390,000 cut, or 5 percent of its $7.8 million budget. This has happened because of the automatic spending you have heard talked about...as ‘‘sequestration.’’

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SO, The Park Loop Road, the Cadillac Mountain Summit Road and the Hulls Cove Visitor Center will open May 19 instead of April 15. They also plan to scale back the free ranger-led programs and school education programs, cut seasonal staffing and reduce the hours of operation at the visitor center and the Islesford Historical Society.

The park officials have already been doing cut backs over the last few years, but visitors will really feel these cuts. Acadia is a busy place, they see about 220,000 visitors in April and May, and 650,000 in September and October. It had about 2.4 million visitors last year.

I hope they don’t plan on closing early too. I was in Acadia last fall toward the end of and the top of Cadillac was PACKED with people. I mean many busloads of people. They were from the cruise ships in Bar Harbor and for the MDI marathon.

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