[Acadia National Park, Sep 23, 2024]

For our second day in the park, I had two trails on the docket. I also hoped to make it to Jordan Pond House right as it opened at 11 am so we could have their famous popovers! This was an experience I didn’t want to miss, but it was a headache planning the hikes around that time and location.

The two hikes I wanted to do were The Precipice and the Bubbles Nubble Loop. The Precipice is a shorter but steeper version of the Beehive. It can take as little as 90 minutes if you take a shortcut on the Orange and Black trail down instead of the longer route that’s on Alltrails. The Bubbles Nubble loop traverses the summits of North Bubble, South Bubble, and Conners Nubble. Looking at the map of the park on Alltrails, I realized I could connect this loop with the Jordan Pond Path to get to the Jordan Pond House on foot. This meant we could leave our car at the trailhead rather than drive to Jordan Pond House and fight for parking.

Once I figured that out, I had to decide whether to add on The Precipice before or after. I was afraid it would be too crowded to do in the afternoon, since it is one of the most popular hikes in the park. It meant a very early start to our day, but hey, you only live once!

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans. When we got to the trailhead a little after 7 am, the mountain was shrouded with fog. It meant slippery rungs and rocks and no views. Given the nature of the hike, the risk wasn’t worth the reward. Honestly, after doing the Beehive, I didn’t feel that strongly about needing to do the Precipice. I was actually happy to have the extra time to complete the Bubbles Nubble loop without keeping a close eye on the time.

The Bubbles Nubble Loop traverses the summits of North Bubble, South Bubble and Connors Nubble. It crosses varying terrain of forest paths, steep granite sections and level carriage roads. I was really interested in the carriage roads. Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family gifted the carriage roads to the park. Rockefeller, a skilled horseman, wanted to travel on motor-free byways via horse and carriage into the heart of Mount Desert Island. He commissioned and financed the construction of the roads from 1913 to 1940. Today, the best way to experience them is on a horse or an e-bike. If we had an extra day in the park, we would have definitely done that. But since we didn’t have time for that, this hike was my chance to experience them.

I wanted to leave the South Bubble for last, since this is where we could pick up the Jordan Pond Path from. Our first stop was the North Bubble, which provided us great views of Eagle Lake. It was still pretty foggy, but we could tell the fog was eventually going to burn off.

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After a brief transition to a forest path, we were back on granite. This section had the most amazing plants growing among the rock cracks. It looked like we were walking on a Persian rug! Eagle Lake was lurking below us.

Once we descended from North Bubble, we found ourselves on a carriage road! We weren’t on it for long but I appreciated it nonetheless.

The climb to Connors Nubble was steep but, luckily, short, and it didn’t involve iron rungs!

Another forest path took us back our original split near the trailhead. Now we took the other turn towards South Bubble.

I saw the signs for Bubble Rock, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Imagine my surprise when I saw a glacier erratic! I had just learned about those on my Alaska cruise in July! Glacier erratic rocks are carried by a glacier. When it retreats, the rocks are left there, seemingly in the middle of nowhere since by then they are miles away from whatever larger rock formation they came from. The glacier erratic I saw in Alaska was now in the middle of a pond in a marshy forest. This one was perched precariously on the edge of the granite summit! It made for dramatic photos. I didn’t realize that glaciers were present here, but, of course, it made sense. Glacial ice is the reason Acadia’s granite summits are nice and rounded, not jagged.

Finally, we made it to South Bubble! This summit’s proximity to the parking lot and little elevation gain make it the most visited bubble of the three on the loop. The trail was busy with people, and some seemed to be coming up the steep path from Jordan Pond, which was now before us.

Follow the lake shore on the left of the photo and you will eventually get to the lawn in front of Jordan Pond House way in the back. We were about to head there along that exact same lake shore…. but we had to get down to the lake first. Little did we know, the path from here was an almost vertical downclimb from the rock I am standing on. Iron rungs were involved. I now knew how Ash felt on Beehive because I was very surprised by this short but quite extreme experience.

After this adventure, the path to Jordan Pond seemed downright monotonous. And, it was the busiest trail we had yet to encounter.

After all this, we got to Jordan Pond House about 10 minutes before it opened at 11 am! I mean, we couldn’t have timed it any better even if we tried! The line was not long and about half the people in it had reservations. The rest of us walk-ins had no problem getting a table outside. The fog had completely burnt off and it was almost sunny now!

In addition to the classic plain popover, you could also get a popover filled with lobster as your main dish, as well as a popover sundae for dessert. Did I throw my carnivore keto diet out the window? You bet ya!

After our scrumptious lunch, we attempted to take the park shuttle back to our car at the Bubbles trailhead. Alas, the shuttle goes by trailhead but doesn’t stop there. It seemed a bit silly to me that we couldn’t even request a stop. It was just over a mile, but we took the park road rather than the trail we came on because we didn’t feel like dealing with the crazy ascent up to South Bubble. There was no shoulder along the road but a well-trodden path in the grass made it clear that enough other people had chosen this route rather than the trail. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to end the hike, but at least we got a new perspective on the glacier erratic.

Once we were back in our car, we decided to drive around a bit. We went towards the southwest end of Mt Desert island. I was searching for a lighthouse I vaguely remembered might be in that area but I couldn’t remember the name. I thought we would just see it as we drove in that direction, but no luck. I didn’t bother searching further, and later realized Bass Harbor lighthouse was just a little further west than where we were. I was a little sad I missed it but we enjoyed the gorgeous views around Seal Harbor and Northeast Harbor.

We spent another leisurely afternoon by the hot tub and in our hotel. We had a fantastic couple of days in the park and I definitely want to return and do more in this area.