Acadia, Day 2

If you have been following along with our journey, you'll recall that we arrived at Acadia National Park the day before, and hiked down to the ocean. The next day, we drove to Jordan Pond, arriving well before the crazy hordes of vacationers got there (say 9 o'clock - not too early).

We hiked around Jordan Pond, hiking clockwise - taking the more difficult portion first, so we could have a nice relaxing hike to finish it out. It starts onto these elevated boardwalks - which I thought were pretty cool.

It eventually goes through a rocky landslide with some minor scrambling - everyone managed it. Once through the slide, the trail opened up onto a graded path, with two bridge crossings. The first a loon had set up its nest not 20 feet from the trail in full sunlight, with a beaver lodge about 10 feet further back from there.

We completed the hike around 11 o'clock and Catherine got us reservations for the Jordon Pond House restaurant for an early lunch. We enjoyed the popovers and the nice break. Afterwards, Ian, Leah, and I hopped on a shuttle and went to a trailhead to climb the Bubbles (the two rounded mountains, below). We climbed up South Bubble and then made our way towards North Bubble, but stopped short of the peak so we could catch the shuttle back to Catherine.

We stuck around for sunset, which the colors fizzled in the sky, but it was still quite beautiful. Afterwards, we drove to Otter Cliffs where I took some photos of the Milky Way (didn't turn out). Again, even though the photos didn't turn out, it was still pretty awe inspiring to see all the stars and the Milky Way overhead, with the tide coming up.

Cheers,

Marc