Cadillac Mountain Sunset Autumn View

This gorgeous panoramic image showing a view from Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island, Maine was captured late October during the autumn season. The direction is north northwest. You can plainly see the space between the island and the mainland called Mt. Desert Narrows. Route 3 crosses from Trenton, onto the small Thompson Island, then onto MDI. This particular view is from the northeastern side of the mountain down a little bit from the Summit Path. The business district of Bar Harbor is to the right out of view. The central section is also part of Bar Harbor.

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Trenton has a year-round airport called Hancock County - Bar Harbor Airport (BHB). This provides service to a variety of points throughout New England. (View here.) A new National Park Visitor Center is being constructed just to the north of the airport on the opposite side of the road. Trenton is south of Ellsworth, the main commercial center in this part of Maine, also known as Down East Maine. This is definitely lobster country.

How to get there

This map shows a section of Mount Desert Island with Bar Harbor at the upper right. Cadillac Mountain is directly to the south. There are two ways to get there by automobile. Both are via the Park Loop Road. Routes 233 and 3 intersect and provide entrance to the Park Loop Road on the northern side in Bar Harbor. There is also a entrance point on the southern side of the mountain in Seal Harbor which also goes by the Jordan Pond House and Bubble Pond before arriving at the beginning of the Summit Road. For those rugged individuals with lots of stamina, there are also some hiking trails that will take you there and back. Be sure to check the weather out before starting the journey.

Summit Road GPS: Latitude 44.368891; Longitude -68.238506

Location of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park

Capturing Panoramics

Greg A. Hartford, photographer, author, publisherWhen taking photographs that will be merged together in a panoramic, there are a few rules that are important to follow. One is to do your best to have all images level as you pan left or right and overlap each by about one third. The next is to have all images set the same for shutter speed and aperture. Do not have the camera set on auto. Another suggestion is to have the focal lengths set close to what is considered a normal vocal length for the camera. For a full-frame camera, this is about 50 - 55mm. This will minimize distortions.