Mosher Hill Falls, Farmington, Maine

We were recently told of these falls by a neighbor. His description made it seem like the falls were right around the bend. In reality, they’re about three miles away from our house. Nevertheless, they’re wonderful and quite the hidden attraction around these parts.

Some people call these falls “Mosher Falls” and some people call them the “Cascades.” I think I’m going to stick with Mosher Falls, because they’re way too many cascade type falls in Maine. I’m going to attach a video to the bottom of this post where the person who took the video calls the brook the falls fall into “Cascade Brook.” I’ll take his word for it as I’m no expert of this area.

Between the two of us, Laura and I took over 100 photographs of our outing. It’s the kind of place you think every single picture you take is pure excellence. Unfortunately, as I was going through them, I realized that not everyone wants to see 25 different views of the falls. Two or three, tops, but not 25. Needless to say, I deleted many.

I’m going to post the pictures I took and then I’ll update this post later with Laura’s. You’ll see the distinction between our photos because I had the wide angle lens and she didn’t.

Enjoy the pictures.

As we were on our way to the falls, I decided to stop the car so we could grab a few photos of the road we were traveling. It was one of those kinds of days. You’d be surprised – once the Spring rolls around, Maine weather becomes magical.

I’m basically going to give you a rundown of what’s what with these pictures. I made sure they were in order, so you’ll see things as they happened during our hike. First, after we got out of the car, we began walking down the trail. The brook is on the left and we’re obviously heading toward the falls.

Further down the trail a bit was a swampy area on the right. The sun was shining through nicely, so Laura and I spent a moment or two there. I was the one who spent the moment, she was the one who spent the two.

The next four pictures are of the brook in all its glory. The first is me walking towards it, the second is me following it down toward the falls, the third is me getting closer to the falls and the last one is me getting ready to go over. Almost.

Once we made it to the actual falls, we stopped to rest at the top of them. You can tell that’s what this is in the picture below. If you’ve been to a waterfall before, you know what the top looks like. They’re all the same.

And right past the rest area was a cliff that looks down to the bottom. To the left was the falls, but they were barely in view.

Since it was so difficult to see the falls from the side we were on, we decided to head back upstream and cross over to the other side. I noticed a trail on that side earlier. Here is the trail we walked down and our first real glimpse of the falls.

I kept sneaking closer and closer to the edge, just so I could get a better picture. This is the best I could get from that point.

Finally, we continued our walk all the way to the bottom of the trail and then cut into the ravine. After that, we walked back up, but this time, right along the brook. This is what we found.

As promised, I’m attaching the video someone took of the falls. After that, I’ll append this post with Laura’s photos.

Farmington, ME – Cascade Brook

Laura’s photos are below. Take a look at how different they are than mine. Granted, I had the wide angle lens, but still, it’s interesting to see what she’s drawn towards when compared to my shots.

Video of Mosher Hill Falls in Farmington, Maine

Another visit…

Yesterday was car inspection day. We have a car and a truck that both need to get inspected annually. A few years back, I decided to get them looked at in the same month, so things would be easier and I’d remember when that month was. For some reason or another, I thought that April was appropriate because spring would be in full swing and the weather would be fine. Well, unfortunately, I miscalculated because in April around these parts, while the weather is fairly decent, the towns have yet to grade the dirt roads. And ungraded roads after a long winter means potholes. If you have ever lived anywhere dirt roads and potholes exist, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Some of these things are so big you might just lose a car in them.

Locals plan their trips around the roads in this area and if you know what you’re doing, you’ll avoid certain areas. We don’t know what we’re doing and we like adventure, so we took pretty much all dirt roads to the inspection site. While I did very well in the car and only hit one pothole, Laura did much better in the truck. She had it easy because the truck’s tires are made for potholes. It eats them for breakfast. I actually prefer to drive the truck this time of year and leave the car behind, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The point of this post isn’t to talk about the roads or the potholes; it’s to talk about the waterfall we stopped at on the way home. Just a few miles from where we live is the one and only Mosher Hill Falls of Farmington, Maine. I actually took photos of these falls a while back. Unfortunately, every single one of the photos I took yesterday was completely awful. They were all blurry, except for one. I guess I’m still working out the focus operation of my new Canon T7i. Here’s the good photo. It’s of a hole in a tree. Good thing I got this or there would be no photos at all for this part of the post.

I’d say that’s a pretty good photo.

To make up for the fact that I took terrible photos, I borrowed some of Laura’s to show you here. I hope you enjoy them.

The real surprise from yesterday was how good the video I took came out. This camera of mine really rocks with video. I didn’t even think of taking any until we began walking down the trail, but when I did remember, I took it almost the whole way through. I wanted to test out the auto-focus capabilities (which are awesome), the zoom and I also wanted to practice walking as steadily as possible. While the auto-focus part is pretty much settled, I need to really get a handle on the zoom and the steady walking. It was a real chore to try to keep the camera steady and walk through the snow and ice with my Crocs on. They felt like slippers and about half way through this video, you can hear me yelp as I slid down part of the hill. Good thing I didn’t end up in the water.

We also walked down the wrong side of the stream, so we couldn’t cross over to see the falls from below. That’s where the good view is. Next time, which will probably be in just a few short weeks, we’ll walk down the proper side of the stream and I’ll get some nice photos and video for you then. In the meantime, enjoy what I have today. It’s completely uncut and it’s everything I took. Be sure to notice when I walk on the side of the cliff. It was awfully scary, but that’s why they say my middle name is “Danger.”

Also, if you’re reading this post via email, you’ll need to click through to the post itself. Video doesn’t show up in email for some reason. And if you’re watching the video in the post, you might want to click to enlarge it. I captured it in high-def, so it’s really clear. Enjoy!

UPDATE: We went back to the falls on May 9, 2018 and I took some pretty decent photos. Instead of writing an entirely new post just to show the photos, I decided to add them here. Check them out below.

Also, check out the new video I took the same day I captured the above photos.

Hiking a Beautiful Maine Waterfall – Mosher Hill Falls