Road Tripping: Acadia National Park, Part 3

Again, if you missed them, here are part 1 and part 2. And here is the third and final installment, in which we do a little more hiking but also a lot of driving and some beachgoing. (If you can have beachgoers, there must be such a thing as beachgoing.)

For our last full day at Acadia, we planned to walk around Jordan Pond and do a quick hike up the South Bubble (a small mountain) to see Bubble Rock. We've done this pretty much every time we've been to Acadia, and it’s a nice way to spend a few hours. Spoiler alert: It didn't rain.

Jordan Pond.  The South Bubble is the mountain on the right.

Bubble Rock.  No, it will not fall over even if you push really hard.

After the walk, we had a late lunch at the Jordan Pond House. They make fantastic popovers (a kind of light muffin made from an egg batter) that they serve warm with butter and strawberry jam. Their jam is also really good. Most of the meals come with a popover, which we eat as an appetizer. For the main course, I ordered a salad. Normally, salad and I don’t get along for entire meals, because I think they either taste like nothing or dirt.

However, I will make exceptions for salads that don’t taste like nothing or dirt, which I've found is more likely to be the case when the salad greens don’t consist entirely of iceberg lettuce. So I ordered a cranberry walnut salad which included a variety of salad greens, a few apple slices, feta cheese, cranberries, walnuts, and a citrus vinaigrette. It was good, but it was also strategic planning so that I would still have stomach room for dessert. Dessert is my favorite meal of the day.

For dessert, I ended up getting ice cream made by the Jordan Pond House, one scoop of vanilla and one of blueberry. I should order dessert more often.

After that it was back to the campsite for a last night; in the morning we packed up the campsite and took a quick drive back up to Cadillac Mountain to take in the view. No fog this time:

Then it was back on the road to Portland for the night, and on to Ogunquit the next day for a little beachgoing. It was hot and sunny . . . and crowded. At this point, I’d like to officially cast my family vacation ballot for the mountains over the beach. Sand and waves are nice for a few hours, but for a whole week, give me dirt, rocks, and trees. Anyway, after our short beach stop, we headed for home, because there’s no place like home.