Why go to Baxter State Park in the fall when it’s starting to get cold? No mosquitoes. No black flies. Few tourists. Moose are starting their rut. And if you time it right – lots of fall color!!
I compiled the chart below from two years worth of Maine Foliage reports for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Each map going from left-to-right in a row of the chart is a week apart, and the rows start from Sept 15 2010 (top row) and Sept 14 2011, respectively. This helps to show the variability from year to year and the importance of timing your trip to correspond with near-peak or peak color in the location in which you’re interested. I’ve noticed that Baxter State Park will “turn” a little before the surrounding areas, probably because much of the park is at a higher elevation and therefore generally colder than it’s surroundings. Keep that in mind when planning to visit for fall foliage!!
Besides the calendar, your other best resource is Maine’s official foliage website which you’ll want to check frequently. In season, it gets updated weekly, mid-week. Enjoy!
www.maine.gov/doc/foliage/report/index.shtml : 3rd week Sept - 3rd week in Oct 2010 and 2011
All images in this post, except for the still pond which is an HDR, are straight out of the camera (plus normal post processing). The last image isn’t a single photo at all – in fact it is 1109 photos taken over 50 minutes!! To give you a sense of what Baxter can look like, I created a time lapse of a road-side stream using a special 2-axis-movement piece of equipment called eMotimo PT (tell Brian I sent you!) which is used for time lapse photography, one of my favorite types of photography. A follow up post will show this device in action. Be sure to click on the short video in order to watch it and let me know what you think (music will be added when I get video editing software)!!
Be sure to click “Play” on the video below to watch the time lapse video…
Resources for more information:
– Emotimo PT Time Lapse Machine: http://emotimo.com/
– Maine Foliage Report: http://www.maine.gov/doc/foliage/report/index.shtml
– Maine Appalachian Trail Club: http://www.matc.org/
– Official US Government Web Site: http://www.nps.gov/appa/index.htm
– Appalachian Trail Conservancy: http://www.appalachiantrail.org/home
– Baxter State Park: http://www.baxterstateparkauthority.com/
More great fun Scott!
Thanks Denise!! And I agree, lots of fun there 🙂 Looking forward to going back in 2012. One more post and then MOOSE to bring in the New Year!!
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Thank you very much for sharing your leaf color maps and all the links. I hope to use them.
Thanks Dennis – I’m glad you found these useful!! I’ll send you a higher-res foliage map that’s a bit easier to read.