Sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine, August 26, 2013, 5:57 a.m.

While vacationing in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, our family took a 2-day trip to Acadia National Park, 130 mies north. When checking in to our motel at Bar Harbor, the woman at the front desk assured me that Cadillac Mountain is the place to be for great sunrises. After checking out the mountain that afternoon with it’s spectacular sweeping views, it seemed like a good plan and hoped for nice clouds the next morning.

The forecast for the next morning was for overcast skies and rain, generally not conducive to landscape photography. I peaked out the window at 4:30 a.m. and saw a glimmer of hope: although the sky was generally overcast, there were a few large horizontal splits in the clouds. If the openings in the clouds held up, the sunrays would bounce off the upper and lower clouds, creating the possibility of a great sunrise.

I drove up the winding Cadillac Mountain for about 20 minutes, reaching the summit at about 5:30 a.m. There were dozens of people at the summit as catching the first sunrise in the U.S. is popular among Acadia National Park visitors (actually, the first sunrise in the U.S. can be seen from Cadillac Mountain only in the fall and winter when the sun rises south of due east). As the photo indicates, the sunrise that morning was stunning, with an explosion of blue and orange colors as the sunrays bounced against the clouds. This photo provides a sweeping view of the sunrise, with Bar Harbor as the backdrop-a very special and memorable moment that was the highlight of our trip. Not much post-production work on this photo, as I couldn’t improve on the spectacular show that Mother Nature put on that morning.

Cadillac Mountain is within Acadia National Park with an elevation of about 1,500 feet, according to Wikipedia. The mountain honors the French explorer and adventurer, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac. He explored New France, an area of North America that stretched from present-day Eastern Canada in the north to Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico in the south. He helped found Detroit; founders of the Cadillac auto company, paid homage to him by using his name for their company and his armorial bearings as its logo in 1902.

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