Gabi and I went to Maine for a short vacation to spend a few days at Baxter State Park, which is one of the best wilderness areas on the East Coast. We only visited this park in fall before, so we were very excited to see it during summertime too and Baxter didn’t disappoint. The weather was nice, sunny, but not too hot, so we hiked several trails in the park. Of course, I brought along a lightweight photo equipment too hoping to photograph the landscapes and wildlife of this magnificent park. However, most of the time I left my photo gear in the car and just enjoyed the hikes. I only took it with me if I knew I was going to have the opportunity to take some photos. One of these hikes were in the Daicey Pond area where we went to see the Little and Big Niagara Falls. These falls of course have nothing to do with the “real” Niagara Falls on the border of New York and Canada. Anyway, the falls were worth the hike and I took some images too.
Little Niagara Falls, Baxter State Park
Big Niagara Falls, Baxter State Park
Waterfalls usually look better if it was more overcast or around sunset, but for sunsets we went to the main attraction, to the Sandy Stream Pond. This is the most beautiful place in the park, where you can see Mount Katahdin and the other peaks.
On the second day I took this panorama photo with my iPhone to show all the peaks in one image.
The Sandy Stream Pond is also one of the best places to see some wildlife in the park. We saw here many American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) and I managed to take some nice photos of them. I had to use ISO 6400 to get decent shutter speeds for these very fast little animals in the dark forest. Fortunately, when they find some mushrooms or a pine cone, they stop and only focus on eating them as fast as possible. They usually not too skittish if you approach them carefully and these ones even tolerated while I was setting up my tripod near them.
This pond is also famous for the moose (Alces alces) population that regularly use it for grazing. We were lucky on our first day as a cow moose came out after sunset not too far from where we were. I took some shots then tried to find a better place to get a little closer to her.
We hiked further on the trail and found a nice viewpoint where we enjoyed watching this huge, calm animal. We were very quiet and moved slowly so she didn’t mind us at all.
After a while she moved closer to the woods and I was able to take my favorite photos of the whole trip, a moose in a typical moose habitat. It was an incredible experience
The photos were taken with my Canon EOS 5DsR camera. For the landscape shots I used my 17-40mm F/4 lens, while the wildlife images were captured with my 300mm F/4 lens + my 1.4x extender.
