Below are Tom Dempsey's favorite images from a 3-week RV camping trip in October 2014 to see peak fall colors across Northeast USA plus scenic Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, CANADA. Photos include: New York (Adirondacks, Watkins Glen and Letchworth SP Gorges, and Corning Glass Museum); Vermont (Mt. Philo SP, Smugglers Notch and Shelburne Museum); New Hampshire (White Mountains!); Maine (Acadia National Park, Pemaquid Lighthouse); Pennsylvania (Ohiopyle SP); and New Brunswick, CANADA (Hopewell Rocks sunrise, St Martins, and Fundy Trail Parkway).

Acadia Mountain Trail features boulder gardens sprouted with gnarly trees twisted by harsh weather, appearing like a Japanese garden. The trail tops out with good views of Somes Sound and peak fall colors typically in the second week of October, in Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor, on Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA. Hike granite peaks and enjoy Atlantic coastal scenery. Originally created as Lafayette National Park in 1919, the oldest National Park east of the Mississippi River, it was renamed Acadia in 1929. During the last glacial maximum 21,000 years ago, glaciers measuring up to 9,000 feet thick cut into granite ridges, sculpting the fjord-like Somes Sound. After hiking, you'll love grabbing a bite of seafood at Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, which serves delicious lobsters boiled in fresh, clean seawater over a wood fire.

A unique landscape of beautifully striped bedrock descends from Pemaquid Light to the Atlantic Ocean. Pemaquid Point Lighthouse was built in 1835 and commemorated on Maine's state quarter (released 2003). Visit Lighthouse Park at the tip of Pemaquid Neck in New Harbor, near Bristol, Lincoln County, Maine, USA. From Damariscotta on bustling US Highway 1, drive 15 miles south on Maine Route 130 to the park. The keeper's house (built 1857) is now the Fishermen's Museum at Pemaquid. Geologic history: Silurian Period sediments laid down 430 million years ago were metamorphosed underground into a gneiss 360-415 million years ago, and intruded by molten rock which cooled slowly, creating the park's exposed metamorphic gray rocks with dikes of harder, white igneous rock. Underground heat and pressure tortured and folded the rock layers into the striking patterns that are now pounded and polished by the sea and rough weather. While you are in the area, see Eartha, World's Largest Globe (41.1 ft in diameter) at DeLorme Headquarters Map Store, in Yarmouth, Maine. DeLorme makes my favorite state atlases. Take Interstate 295 Exit 17 (10 min north of Portland).

Mount Jo Trail at Heart Lake is one of the best hikes in the Adirondack Mountains, near Lake Placid, North Elba, New York, USA. Beautiful Heart Lake and Adirondak Loj (an historic lodge) lie at the foot of Mount Jo (2876 ft or 877 m elev), which is on land owned by the Adirondack Mountain Club (AMC). With a sweeping vista of the Great Range, Mt Jo offers one of the best views for the effort in the Adirondacks: ascend 710 feet or 216 m from the Loj in 2.6 miles roundtrip. From atop Mt. Jo, see the surrounding High Peaks Wilderness Area, a state Forest Preserve protected within Adirondack Park. Adirondack Park is the largest park in the contiguous USA and is the largest National Historic Landmark. Geologic history: The Adirondacks are very new mountains from old rocks, uplifting in a circular dome (160 miles wide and 1 mile high) over just the past 5 million years. Geologically, the Adirondacks are NOT in the Appalachians: instead, they are part of the Canadian Shield (or Laurentian or Precambrian Shield which underlies half of Canada). The Adirondacks are still rising fast, up to 3 mm per year, with a central core (High Peaks region) of intrusive igneous rock, Anorthosite (not common at Earth's surface but common on the Moon's surface), surrounded by a massive dome of 1-billion-year-old metamorphic gneiss rock, in turn surrounded by some younger sedimentary rocks.

From Inspiration Point, see Middle and Upper Genesee Falls amid the splendor of autumn leaf colors at Letchworth State Park, near Portageville, New York, USA. In Letchworth State Park, renowned as the "Grand Canyon of the East," the Genesee River roars northeast through a gorge over three major waterfalls between cliffs as high as 550 feet, surrounded by diverse forests which turn bright fall colors in the last three weeks of October. The large park stretches 17 miles between Portageville and Mount Morris in the state of New York. Drive or hike to many scenic viewpoints along the west side of the gorge. The best walk is along Gorge Trail #1 above Portage Canyon from Lower Genesee Falls (70 ft high), to Inspiration Point, to Middle Genesee Falls (tallest, 107 ft), to Upper Genesee Falls (70 ft high). High above Upper Falls is the railroad trestle of Portageville Bridge, built in 1875, to be replaced 2015-2016. Geologic history: in the Devonian Period (360 to 420 million years ago), sediments from the ancestral Appalachian mountains eroded into an ancient inland sea and became the bedrock (mostly shales with some layers of limestone and sandstone plus marine fossils) now exposed in the gorge. Genesee River Gorge is very young, as it was cut after the last continental glacier diverted the river only 10,000 years ago. The native Seneca people were largely forced out after the American Revolutionary War, as they had been allies of the defeated British. Letchworth's huge campground has 270 generously-spaced electric sites.

In Watkins Glen, the spellbinding Gorge Trail winds two miles over and under 19 waterfalls of Glen Creek, which descends 400 feet vertically under 200-foot-high cliffs. Watkins Glen State Park is south of Seneca Lake in Schuyler County in the Finger Lakes region New York, USA. The Devonian sedimentary rocks are mostly soft shales, with some layers of harder sandstone and limestone.

The fascinating Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG.org) covers the art, history and science of glass, brought to life through live glassmaking demonstrations, offered all day, every day, in Corning, New York, USA. The not-for-profit museum was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated) and has a collection of more than 45,000 glass objects, some over 3500 years old, the "world's best collection of art and historical glass."

The White Mountains (a range in the northern Appalachian Mountains) cover a quarter of the state of New Hampshire, USA. We leaf peepers love the peak of autumn foliage around the first week of October. Along popular Kancamagus Highway (NH Route 112) in White Mountain National Forest, enjoy Sabbaday Falls, Albany Covered Bridge and Rocky Gorge Scenic Area on Swift River. Hike rocky UNH Loop Trail on Hedgehog Mountain for good views of the Sandwich Range Wilderness and Mount Passaconaway. Walk to Diana's Baths to see many beautiful pools and waterfalls along Lucy Brook on North Moat Mountain. See Mount Washington (6288 ft, highest in northeast USA) above Pinkham Notch on Vermont Route 16 in the Presidential Range. Further south near Holderness, walking up West Rattlesnake Mountain gives an impressive view of Squam Lake.

See the sun set over see Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks from atop Mount Philo State Park, in Charlotte, Vermont, USA. To the north rises Mount Mansfield (4393 feet or 1339 m), the highest mountain in Vermont: in the Green Mountains (a range in the Appalachians), drive Vermont Route 108 from Jeffersonville to Stowe through the narrow mountain pass of Smugglers Notch.

Shelburne Museum is one of the finest, most diverse, unconventional museums of American folk art. Visit this extensive museum in the town of Shelburne, near Lake Champlain, in Vermont, USA. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 38 buildings, 25 of which are historic (relocated from New England and New York). See impressionist paintings, American paintings, artifacts of the 1600s-1900s, folk art, quilts and textiles, carriages, furniture, a lighthouse, covered bridge, and 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga. Electra Havemeyer Webb, an avid collector of American folk art, founded the Museum in 1947. Electra's Memorial Building stores a European Paintings Collection in six period rooms relocated from her 1930s New York City apartment on 740 Park Avenue.

Ohiopyle State Park is traversed by the Youghiogheny River Trail South section of the Great Allegheny Passage, part of a 318-mile system (512 km) of off-road long-distance trails for biking and walking between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Visit Ohiopyle State Park for peak fall colors starting in late October, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, USA. 14 miles of the Youghiogheny River Gorge pass through the park, providing some of the best whitewater boating in the Eastern United States. View impressive rapids from a high rail-trail trestle and from a loop trail around the meander of Ferncliff Peninsula Natural Area, with a side trip to Ohiopyle Falls. Ohiopyle's Kentuck Campground is just 17 minutes from Fallingwater, the famous Kaufmann Residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Ohiopyle SP is bisected by Pennsylvania Route 381, about 90 minutes southeast of Pittsburgh via car.