These Of The Best National Parks To Visit In The Fall
Mountainous landforms, Sky, Natural environment, Natural landscape, Mountain range, Leaf, Plant community, Deciduous, Tree, Mountain, Attention, leaf peepers. Slip into autumn colors with a hike or a drive or a paddle trip through these paintbox vivid national parks. Fall foliage has never looked so good. Let find out These Of The Best National Parks To Visit In The Fall below.
These Of The Best National Parks To Visit In The Fall
Yosemite National Park, California
Tree wise, Yosemite is known best for its giant sequoias the park’s groves of towering redwoods are like quiet, fragrant cathedrals but visitors at this time of year can’t help but notice the orange, yellow, and red leaves flaring around all those ancient evergreens. Cottonwoods, aspens, and black oak are responsible for the golden hues, and maples and Pacific dogwoods turn red. Much of the color depends, of course, on rainfall and drought has plagued the region in recent years, but even a little vivid display goes a long way when contrasted against a background of those magnificently stern rock faces.
Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio
Most years in this spectacular valley, the sugar maples are the first harbingers of the season, going off in reds, oranges, and yellows along the river banks. The red maples follow, and like clockwork the leaves of the white oaks and pin oaks start turning their distinctive russet color.
Over the days, the color warms its way up the slopes of the valley with deep reds from gum trees, dogwoods, and northern red oaks and bright yellows zinging the palette, courtesy of tulip poplars, big tooth aspen, and silver and black maple. The full range of fall’s colors can be enjoyed by walking along the towpaths along the Ohio and Erie canals or hiking to Brandywine Falls.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
Sure, these mountains are gorgeous in summer and winter, but it’s during those transition seasons, spring and fall, when the beauty of the park is truly breathtaking. The vast majority of the park’s trees are deciduous, not evergreen, so vivid colors roll across the hills: yellow birch, the beech and tulip poplars, and American mountain ash going off like a fireworks display. Any hike will do, but the trail up to Laurel Falls presents some especially magical views. Don’t forget to look down for color, too. You’ll find goldenrod, jewelweed, witch hobble, and coneflowers Echinacea lighting up alongside the paths.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Quietly tucked in among all those mountainside conifers, aspen trees bide their time until mid September when their presence becomes a lot more visible. The high pitched yellow of the trembling leaves announces the changing season like nothing else in the Rockies.
Unless you happen to hear the male elks bugling, a distinctive sound which makes the aspens’ seasonal display seem almost modest in comparison. Along the ground, wild yellow and purple asters enjoy a final round of flowering before winter snows come. That is once of These Of The Best National Parks To Visit In The Fall.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas
The best way to enjoy autumn in Texas is by taking a hike into McKittrick Canyon in late October or early November. The area’s ecosystem is mostly scrub desert but as you walk deeper, the effect of the narrow canyon and its creek are felt: taller trees ash and big tooth maple provide shade and color.
The Texas madrone tree, with its strange peeling bark, is heavy with red berries for the birds. Don’t forget to pay attention to the ground level, too: wildflowers bloom here well into the fall including red cardinal flowers, several colors of columbine, and orange butterfly weed.
Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, Virginia, Maryland
With views described by no less than Thomas Jefferson as the most stupendous scenes in nature, Harpers Ferry truly shines in autumn. Virginia creeper turns vivid red along the ground and rock faces and the forests, fully 70 percent deciduous, warm into glowing reds, yellows, and orange.
Take a solo hike up into the mountains the Appalachian Trail runs through the park or up the stone steps to Jefferson Rock for a panoramic view of the valley, or join a ranger led fall foliage walk on Saturdays in October. If the day warrants inside activity, fall is celebrated in some of the historic buildings along the riverfront with cider making and pickling, among other events. These Of The Best National Parks To Visit In The Fall.
