Our last full day in Bar Harbor, so we made it count and went for a nice, long hike. The first time my wife and I ever hiked in Acadia, we ascended the northern ridge of Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak in the park, at 1,532 feet. I can hear you Rocky Mountain folk snickering already, but how far up do you have to climb out west to break out above the treeline? Many peaks in Acadia National Park open up less than a thousand feet above sea level, providing breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and the sea. So there! Today we decided to try the spine of Cadillac from the south, a longer and somewhat more challenging approach than the northern route, but still nothing like the total pain-fest that we put ourselves through on Monday in the Western Mountains. Round trip the hike was 7.4 miles, our longest venture together yet, and took us about five and a half hours, with breaks. The trail was simply spectacular - after threading its way gently through a boulder-strewn forest, we then came across a feature called Eagle's Crag, which gave us our first breakout views of the ocean and the nearby Cranberry Islands to the south. But that was just the opening act - a little more up and down, and then we were in a stretch of scrub pines, fir trees, and blueberry patches. The trees, only hundreds of feet above sea level, were nevertheless so exposed to constant high winds and foul weather from the sea that they were already gnarled and dwarfish, compared to the more sheltered forests below. We nibbled on some wild blueberries and continued along our way, trudging our way above even the scrub until it was just us, the granite, the boulders, and the painfully blue sky. Can you say sunburn on top of sunburn? Ouch! I knew you could... Ahead we could see the ridge of Cadillac and our final goal, the summit, rising before us in seemingly carefully-stacked heaps of stone. Behind us were the Cranberries, and the open ocean. To our right, Champlain Mountain, almost as tall as Cadillac, Dorr Mountain, named after the founder of Acadia, and their foothills rose against Frenchman Bay. And to the left, ridge after ridge of inviting peaks - Pemetic, Sargent, Beech, Penobscot, Day, Norumbega, and beyond. Maria was snapping picture after picture, while I just drank it all in and tried not to remember that this was the end of our vacation. But what a perfect week!