1800 mile road trip for fall color in Maine

Every year my friend Ben and I try to connect somewhere in the country to do a photography trip. This year we decided on Maine for fall color and it did not disappoint.
These photos are a combination of images shot with my Fuji Xt-3 and my iphone Xs.

Day 1
We had some night flights which got us into Portland Maine around 11:30pm.

Day 2
We started our day at 6:00am at the Portland Head lighthouse which is one of the most famous lighthouses in Maine. It was windy and rainy and cold but the location was really pretty. We knew we wanted to come back when the weather was better.

As the morning continued, the rain got worse so we stopped off at Walmart to buy umbrellas.

We then drove to the Sunday River covered bridge which was a beautiful old wooden bridge. By this point, it was raining really hard so we didn’t venture too far from the car and just explored the areas around the river banks.

We then started driving towards the Appalachian mountains. We found a nice spot to take photographs of the mountains in the mist.

The next stop was Screw Auger falls right off the road. It was very easy to get to and Ben and I took turns holding an umbrella for the other so we could setup our cameras and get some good long exposures of the waterfall.

Step Falls was our next spot that we hiked in to. Hard to get a good view of the falls. It was raining really hard and the rocks were slick like ice so we didn’t feel safe to get out on the rocks for a better view.

The next stop was an Overpass bridge near coos canyon followed by Coos canyon itself which had beautiful color. The trees had vibrant reds and the river was lined with yellow and green.

Our next stop was Rangeley Lake state park where we didn’t see much but still got some beautiful road pictures with yellow trees.

We then moved on to Smalls Falls which was another nice little waterfall that was easily accessible.

We had a couple more waterfall stops to make but decided to skip them and move on to Greenville Where we were going to stay the night and hopefully get sunrise in Moosehead Lake.

Day 2
Unfortunately that plan didn’t work. There was no sunrise because it was heavy clouds.
We took a few photos from the parking lot at Kelly’s Landing.

We then started a long drive up to Baxter state park. We took the shortest route which was the western side but we didn’t realize that 1/2 of our drive was on dirt roads and with all the rain, they were a mess and slow to navigate.
When we arrived we hiked to Katahdin stream falls which was a gorgeous waterfall. The weather was still pretty grey which is actually great for waterfalls.
The parking area also had some beautiful trees.

One thing that we were totally amazed by is the amount of color even on the ground. The leaves had freshly fallen so everywhere we went, there was a carpet of yellow and red. Ben had setup his tripod to get this shot of us.

From there we had a 3 hour drive to Schoodic point which is a peninsula that is part of Acadia National Park. We had a few quick coastal shots.

Here’s a quick behind the scenes photo from the scene above:

We then drove around to the main part of the park To otter point for sunset. When we arrived, the skies cleared up and we had perfect light for an evening sunset.

There were probably 50 other photographers there enjoying this scene.

The park itself was very crowded. Apparently there is the annual marathon happening in Acadia this weekend so it was very crowded everywhere.
We had dinner in the Route 66 restaurant in Bar Harbor which surely had a lot of fun stuff to look at!

Day 3
This morning we woke up at 5:30 to go catch the sunrise At Jordan pond with The Bubbles in the background. It was a beautiful and mostly still morning so we got a nice reflection in the lake. The cloud cover was still very thick which limited the light.

We drove up to Cadillac mountain for views of whole park which was neat to see. I liked seeing the cruise ship docked out in the Harbor.

Next was Otter cliffs where we did some rock scrambling to get some nice views of the Acadia coastline.

You can see a lot of climbers playing on the cliffs…what a great place to climb!

At this point the rain picked back up. We drove to Bass harbor light house. We arrived at the wrong time of day because the tide was really far out so we didn’t get any water in the foreground. It was also grey and rainy so I just took a quick iPhone shot and did a sky replacement on my phone.

We then went to Echo lake but it was raining really hard so it was just a quick stop.

We saw SOOOO many turkeys alongside the road, it was crazy!

Next was Bubble pond in the rain.

After that we drove around to Rockport where we stayed the night. It was raining hard so we checked into our hotel and watched some football. After 1.5 hours, the rain stopped and the sky lightened up. We grabbed our cameras and headed out to catch the Sunset on west Penobscot bay. We found a vacant lot on the water and the tide had gone out. There was deep squishy seaweed, garbage, and lot of mud but that’s where we had to go to get some amazing photos. It was awesome!

Day 4
We started the day at 5:00am. Sunrise wasn’t until 6:45. We drove to the Marshall point light house in hopes of catching some stars over the lighthouse and then we hung around and just enjoyed a peaceful morning.

Next, we drove up Mt Battie in Camden hills state park to get a beautiful view of the harbor and the town of Camden far down below.

We had plans to visit a couple more light houses today but this was our first day of clear skies and sunshine so we decided to drive across the state and head into the White Mountains of New Hampshire as we thought the fall color would look great against a blue sky. The coastal areas were not at peak color yet, but farther inland was definitely at peak! We drove the Kancamagus highway. It was a beautiful drive on a beautiful day. Apparently everyone else thought that too though. There was a two mile traffic backup just to get into one of the overlooks.

Next we were going to hike the Flume in Franconia notch state park. We ended up leaving. I’ve never seen a state park like that. Every parking space was full, every spot on the grass was full, and then there was a 1/2 mile long line of cars along the highway. On our way out of the park we saw a 4 mile traffic jam trying to get in. We ended up driving down highway 16 to the east of mount Washington. We found a few nice places to stop and then we began the drive back to Portland.

A beautiful pond on the side of the road provided a perfect mirror reflection.

One of the things that we noticed about Maine was that many of the really nice coastal areas on both ocean and lakes are all private so it was often a real struggle to find spots where we could take pictures along the water. We were trying to find a good sunset spot on our way back to Portland but all the spots we found on google maps were private. This one was from an overpass overlooking the faraway mountains.

Day 5
Another day to wake up at sunrise. We headed back out to the Portland Head Lighthouse. When we were there early in the trip, the weather was terrible but this morning was just about perfect. There were photographers everywhere!! It was a beautiful sunrise.