Maine's autumn, Day 6 | Windmills, turkeys and the Milky Way

The excursion started at home, of course, where I took a photo of the view I woke up to every day for 18 years. It was before the wind picked up, so the surface of Grand Falls Flowage, part of a chain of lakes along Maine's eastern border with Canada, was like glass. The sky, however, was still overcast.

Day 6, the Saturday during my Maine vacation, included a family trip across Route 6 in Washington County, a major east-west route. And when I say "major," I mean it's a hilly, pothole-pocked roadway through the middle of nowhere.

We then took a smaller road north to the Danforth area of northern Washington County.

Along Route 6, near the border of Washington and Penobscot counties, is one of the first instances of a new trend in Maine: wind power. These windmills were constructed along a high ridge, called Stetson Mountain. Maine has harnessed wind power for years with the use of sailboats. But this new mode of energy generation has been met with some resistance, especially from hikers and environmentalists along the Appalachian Trail, who thought the windmills would mar the area's natural beauty. Personally, I think the windmills themselves are kind of attractive.

The wind had picked up considerably after we embarked on our journey, so these pinwheels were moving swiftly.

This is the closest we got to the windmills. This shot is a composite of two separate images, showing the three blades in different positions. The photos were layered in Photoshop.

On a backwoods road off Route 6, a house on a distant hill caught my eye.

Even with real estate as defunct as it is in Florida, you still can't get a deal like this - or a view like this one.

A field was covered in leafy bushes that were turning yellow.

Along a road off Route 6, we ran into a storage field for windmill parts. The area was marked with "no trespassing" signs. I told my parents that I often trespass on private property to get photos. But they were having none of that, so I settled for a shot from the side of the road.

This was taken along the Million Dollar View Scenic Byway, an eight-mile stretch of U.S. 1 that looks eastward to New Brunswick, Canada. The lake is West Grand in northern Washington County, nicknamed the Sunshine County because it's the first in the United States to be graced by the sun's rays each day.

Wild turkeys are making a resurgence in eastern Maine. While he was driving, my father spotted these dozens grazing in someone's backyard (this photo doesn't show the whole group).

My photography eventually made the turkeys rather anxious, and they scurried off.

Back at home, after sunset, the sky cleared, and I took some exposures of the Milky Way Galaxy, something astronomers can't easily make out in most parts of Florida.

For this shot, the camera was pointed at a 90-degree angle upward, showing the stars and the treetops.

Here, the camera's shutter was open for its longest possible exposure: 30 minutes. It shows the circular trails of the stars as Earth spins on its axis.