Most awesome autumn drives

By Joe Yogerst and Rob Baedeker

updated 2:52 p.m. ET Sept. 22, 2008

I drive around one last bend and there she is—a covered bridge glistening in the early morning sun, her whitewashed timbers framed by vibrant fall colors. The river below flows free and easy for now, but soon enough will be frozen over. The window of autumn opportunity in this part of the world is only a couple of weeks, but I’ve hit it dead on, a day that defines everything we love about the fall.

Driving across (or rather “through”) the bridge, my tires rumble over beams that were first laid the year they filmed "Gone With the Wind"—which is exactly what many of the bright colored leaves will soon be. Through the mock Gothic windows I catch snatches of color—crimson maples and golden birches arrayed along the river and climbing the hillsides behind, mingling with evergreens and rocky outcrops that reach toward snowcapped peaks.

Anyone looking at my pictures from the day would swear they’d been snapped in New England. And I probably would have put money on that myself, so close is the resemblance to the holy grail of fall foliage. But it’s not even close. Try central Oregon. Goodpasture Bridge over the McKenzie River about 30 miles east of Eugene. A part of the West where author Ken Kesey grew up and that inspired much of his writing. And just as luscious come fall as the Green Mountains, Franconia Notch or any of New England’s chromatic landmarks.

The fall foliage trip is almost a national rite of passage—a quintessentially American combination of the outdoors and the automobile. For many, losing oneself in a landscape of riotous reds, profound purples, and outrageous oranges can be a quasi-religious experience.

New England, of course, is the classic mecca for fall-foliage pilgrims. Kevin Smith, Ph.D., a plant physiologist with the USDA Forest Service in Durham, N.H., explains that “the vibrancy of color in New England is a function of the mix of tree species that we have—the reds from maples, oranges from sugar maples, yellows from birches, purple from beeches, all mixed in with the dark green of conifers like pine and hemlock.”

Jamie Jensen, author of "Road Trip USA", says Route 100, in Vermont’s Green Mountains, offers “the quintessential New England experience,” with “the classic combinations of rolling pastures, rustic red barns, white clapboard churches, quaint villages and covered bridges—all backed by spectacular hardwood forest whose maple, birch and other trees blaze with fall color.”

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But as Smith and others point out, there are beautiful autumnal landscapes to be found almost anywhere in the country, from the backwoods of northern Florida and the Mississippi delta to the desert canyons of the southwest and places where there aren’t even any trees.

Denali Highway in south-central Alaska fits the latter description, a 135-mile route through rolling alpine tundra terrain that morphs into a carpet of interwoven red, orange and purple the first few weeks of September. From Maclaren Summit you can look out over the always-snow-covered Alaska Range and the highest peak in North America (20,320-foot Denali). Those with a sharp eye and little bit of luck can often see moose, caribou and even the occasional grizzly bear wandering across the autumn landscape.

At the opposite end of the continent, the old Natchez Trace Parkway through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi transforms in the fall—thousands of beech, oak and hickory trees arrayed along a 444-mile route between Nashville and the Mississippi River. For more than 8,000 years, humans have been trekking this leafy path. While today’s Trace is paved, more than 100 roadside hiking trails provide access to state parks, national forest and other wilderness areas where the autumnal coat-of-many-colors can get even more intense.

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“Although one may see fall color anywhere along the length of the parkway, the northern portions tend to have a larger diversity of deciduous trees,” says Dave Carney, chief of interpretation and volunteer coordinator of the Natchez Trace Parkway.

“Because the parkway travels north and south, the north end of the parkway will experience color change first (generally around mid October). From the Alabama state line south to around Tupelo, the colors tend to be a week to two weeks behind the north end of the parkway, and south of Tupelo can be another two weeks beyond that.” Overall, says Carney, the best fall colors tend to be between mileposts 193 (Jeff Busby) and 444 (Nashville).

Another unlikely place for auburn colors is the Black Hills of South Dakota. Belying its monochromatic moniker, the range is saturated with canyons that turn orange-red come fall. Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway loops through the hills on a 68-mile journey past spruce reflected in highland lakes and quacking aspen framing Mount Rushmore.

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