After three days of biking, driving up mountains, and kayaking, I decided to spend my final day at Acadia National Park leisurely paddling around Jordan Pond. Jordan Pond is yet another glacially carved feature of Acadia: it was created during the last ice age by the Wisconsin Ice Sheet. Jordan Pond is more correctly classified as a tarn, or a glacially carved mountain lake, rather than a normal pond. It’s about 150 feet deep, and closed in by a moraine deposited on its south end by the glaciers that created it. To the north of Jordan Pond are two pink granite mountains known as the Bubbles; like Cadillac Mountain, the Bubbles were also worn down into less sharply peaked mountains during the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. They are known as “roche mountonees”; because of how the glacial ice moved across them, on the side where the glacial ice moved upwards they are smooth and have a gentle incline, whereas on the downslope side of the Bubbles the land is jagged and has a fairly steep incline because of the materials the glacier took out of the rock as it traveled downslope.
Jordan Pond with the Bubbles in the background, picture from acadiamagic.com
Jordan Pond is an extremely pretty and calm pond to go paddling around. The water was very clear, and as I went around the pond for about two hours, I saw several different kinds of birds, including loons and chickadees, as well as some frogs and turtles. After I finished paddling around Jordan Pond, I decided to eat lunch at the Jordan Pond House before driving back to the airport to catch my flight home. The Pond House is one of the Park’s most popular attractions, and is the only dining facility in the entire park. The Jordan Pond House was first established in the 1870s; however, a major fire that burned much of Acadia National Park in 1979 also destroyed the Pond House and so it had to be rebuilt. At the Pond House, I enjoyed a light lunch of salad, popovers and tea, before heading back to the Blackwoods Campgorund to pack up my things. All in all, it was a nice way to end my trip.
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