The leaves are turning, which means it’s time to get in the car and enjoy one of nature’s greatest shows. One thing that can quickly sap the serenity is inching along in traffic, as several thousand people pick the same leaf-peeping spot that you do.
To inspire you to explore somewhere new this autumn, we’ve rounded up five of our favorite fall adventures from recent years, all with suggestions on some less-visited spots.
Stumble on New Hampshire’s secret spots
For the author Joyce Maynard, seasonal change is a cycle she loves and curses.
“Every time October approaches, I feel my heart crack a little with the oddest combination of joy and loss, a last hurrah before the serious business of winter settles in,” she writes.
The New Hampshire native, taking what she’s learned over six decades of foliage seasons, shares some of her favorite off-the-beaten-path spots for catching fall radiance in the state.
Cruise the East Bay Region of Rhode Island
Rhode Islanders joke that their real summer begins in the fall, that the state’s true beauty unfurls as tourists disperse and the hot weather recedes.
Just 30 minutes from Providence, over an hour from Boston and four hours from New York City, the East Bay towns of Warren, Bristol, Tiverton and Little Compton offer an idyllic fall weekend getaway.
The writer Christine Chitnis has scoped out the perfect autumn drive, replete with farm stands, antique stores, artist’s workshops and bike paths.
A shoulder-season road trip in ‘Alaska’s playground’
Fall in Alaska isn’t for every traveler. The weather can swing wildly from sunny, cloudless glory one day to six inches of wet snow the next. The tantalizing draw is that, typically, by September, the summer crowds have returned home.
Our Frugal Traveler columnist, Elaine Glusac, took a five-day drive around the Kenai Peninsula, which extends about 150 miles southwest of the Chugach Mountains near Anchorage. She took the trip in 2021, but her ideas for a shoulder-season road trip through “Alaska’s playground” are still golden.
Taking in the fall glow on Virginia’s mountain road
Fall is the most celebrated season on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which connects Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park to North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park, when the winding two-lane boulevard is a spectacle with the golden glow of leaves and cool mountain mist.
The writer Marissa Hermanson journeyed along a stretch of the Appalachian Mountain roadway in Virginia, in 2021, and recommended eight places to stop. One highlight if you take the trip: the Natural Bridge, a 215-foot-tall limestone arch, once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
A head-clearing drive from Music City to Southern Mississippi
Speaking of winding roads, the writer Colleen Creamer got behind the wheel for a drive between Nashville and Tupelo, Miss., on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a head-clearing, 222-mile route free of billboards, traffic lights, stores, gas stations and commercial vehicles. (There are charging stations if you want to do the same drive in an electric vehicle.)
In fall, the leaves of the maple, hickory and oak trees that line the road turn copper, crimson and gold, making for a spectacular drive.
The post Orange! Red! Yellow! 5 Colorful Fall Trips to Inspire Your Own appeared first on New York Times.
