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Don’t Complain About a Hiking Trail Until You’ve Finished It!

Trail Hard? Just Wait — Rock Scramble Ahead!

Carol Labuzzetta, MS
4 min readSep 13, 2022
View of Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park from the top of South Bubble Trail.
© Carol Labuzzetta, 2022.

It’s 8 o’clock on a Tuesday morning. We eat a hearty breakfast consisting of a mix of carbs, protein, and caffeine. It’s 65 degrees but not muggy. The plan for today is to hike in Acadia National Park. We don’t know what to expect, as we’ve never been here before.

But we’ve hiked in our national parks before. To prepare, we pack a small backpack of snacks including pretzels, fruit, raw almonds, and water. There are two rain ponchos stuffed in near the bottom. My husband will carry this pack. I fill a small cross-body bag with my camera, and my driver’s license (I hold the annual national park pass in my name and one is asked to produce an id as you enter the parks, along with your pass.) We both had our cell phones, fully charged.

Since we did not have a map of the park, we went in without an idea of where to hike. This is not our usual mode of operation. However, we had to make a decision as to whether to go to the visitor center or not as we entered. We decided to just go to the Jordan Pond loop trail, and bypass the visitor center** for now.

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Carol Labuzzetta, MS
Carol Labuzzetta, MS

Written by Carol Labuzzetta, MS

I write about the environment, education, nature, and travel. Having two master's degrees, in nursing and environmental education, I am a teacher at heart.

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