Autumn Brings a Call to the Changing Colors

Fall color-time trips always feel like racing across a one-way bridge between lands of warmth and coolness. Being on either side is OK, but the only place you can feel both natures is from the bridge.

Everyone else likes that balanced spot, too, and so the traffic pushes you on. Before you know it the colors have peaked and it’s all over for another year.

The bright blaze in its moment always makes it hard to resist color country’s call. New England is a perpetual favorite for diverse and dense colors. The entire northeastern United States outside of big cities is full of color, yet very crowded. The following are favorite fall color places where you can probably linger a while on the span between summer and winter.

Starting in the West, the higher you go into the Rockies, the more likely you are to see stands of aspen trees turning colors. Colorado is noted statewide for putting on a show.

There are more shades of color at lower altitudes, but the high fluttery golden aspens between 7,500 and 10,000 feet take the applause. They burst like golden charges under a royal sky, with forested evergreen hillsides spattered by the acre in vertical explosions of consistently electric color.

Some of the best viewing of colors is in the southwestern corner of the state and in the surrounding Four Corners area where you can stand simultaneously in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, where their borders converge.

This year, towns throughout the Four Corners region have sponsored Colorfest ’86.

For the best colors you can drive from Durango to Silverton on a road called the Million-Dollar Highway, supposedly so-called because when it was originally paved the locals were so well off from the booming gold mines in their region that they could afford to pave this 50-mile stretch with gold chips. Others believe that the name came from the million-dollar views.

In any case, the road is rimmed by 13,000- and 14,000-foot mountain peaks splashed heavily with the glimmering gold-turning aspen leaves. The road also gets its heaviest use at this time of year as even the locals come out to rubberneck at the incredible beauty.

You can beat the traffic by going off-road for a guided Jeep tour, or you can rent a vehicle for your own four-wheel-drive excursions. Horses from numerous sources are available for trail rides.

Tamarron Resort is midway between Durango and Silverton and on the highway. They keep 35 horses in the heart of the color country just for such trips. Autumn rates, $90-$180 for a double room, phone (800) 525-5420.

If you are lucky enough to get a seat, you might want to travel on the Silverton narrow-gauge train. It cores through the heart of the colors four times daily, making the 90-mile round trip in around seven hours.

The steam-powered train ride is always a visual pleasure of river-carved gorges, mountain summits and endless unpopulated forests. The great Animas River roars below the rail bed and San Juan National Forest crowds the track on both sides. The colors quake in the wind, so close in places that you can touch leaves from the slow train.

There are moments when the swaying 20-m.p.h. train’s rhythm of clamoring metals oddly lulls you into a hypnotic reverie, then suddenly you are seized by immersion into color, electric gold, bright enough to make you squint, then you pass through it, or it through you, it’s sometimes hard to tell, as quickly as you made contact. Bring lots of film for this. The train ride costs $28 for adults, $14 for children, round trip. Season ends Oct. 26.

A Few Unsung Gems

Special hints: Here are a few unsung gems where you can stay and dine around the Four Corners. The Cortez Inn, $35 to $67, October to May, is the newest place in town. A great place for friendly hospitality in the heart of Indian country. Phone (303) 565-6000.

Up the road toward Telluride you’ll find the Rico Motel, $25 to $30, double, phone (303) 967-2444. This is authentic mountain style. Rico probably has under 50 year-round residents, but the colors are outstanding near this extremely remote town.

In Mancos a restaurant called Millwood Junction serves possibly the best seafood in these parts at a Friday night seafood buffet for $11.50. The food is great on other nights, too. Entrees range from $9 to $16.

Father Murphy’s, in Durango, makes good mixed drinks and also serves good sandwiches, about $4, entrees $5 to $9. Tamarron Resort and the antique Strater Hotel are not unsung, but they are dependably good places to stay. Rates at the Strater are $62 to $98, dropping by $10 in mid-October. Phone (800) 247-4431.

Call (800) 228-4524 for areawide information and reservations.

Up in the north country, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota, a special color bridge can only be crossed by paddlers in a canoe. The Boundary Waters are a million acres of lakes south of the Canadian border and west of the Great Lakes.

Canoes are the only allowable mode of transport through this place of quiet and undisturbed beauty. Northern hardwoods, spruce, forest pine, dogwood, birch and even some fluttery gilded aspen create a broad pallet of colors that reflect on the mirroring lakes. Hawks soar with eagles, fish jump in the waters, loons call in the night and so do bears.

Smart campers (camping is the only way you can stay in the Boundary Waters--there are no hotels) suspend food from trees by long ropes. Fall is especially pleasant--too cool for mosquitoes, those prolific summertime canoe area hitchhikers, cool too for good sleeping.

You literally glide through this place. No gas stations, hot dog stands or TV antennas mar your view for 30 miles or so. There are a few resorts on the canoe area periphery, and even those cater mainly to canoeists. They are good for a night before you get your feet wet and for a night to dry off.

Most people just park their cars for a week or two in a lot by an entrance point and paddle away over the same routes traveled by French fur-trapping voyageurs and Ojibwa Indians 200 years ago and more. It probably has not changed here all that much in that time.

You can paddle to rock-carved Indian petroglyphs and clear through Canada into Hudson Bay if you like. The farther away you go, the deeper the fall colors and the fewer other people you meet. Outfitting runs $40 to $75 a day, including canoe and food. For information about outfitting, rental canoes, food and supplies, as well as guides and accommodations, camp permits, fishing licenses and maps, call Minnesota Tourism, (800) 328-1461.

Closer to the traditional heart of fall color country, on the East Coast, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway offer fine colors. The area gets plenty of rain and more varieties of vegetation are grown on the southern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains than anywhere else in the United States.

Dogwood, sourwood and black gum trees turn red in late September. Hickory and tulip trees turn yellow. Sassafras turns orange. Red maples turn multicolored, darker oaks go to maroon or russet brown. And these are set off among a variety of evergreens, including hemlock, spruce, fir, Virginia and white pine.

The biggest hassle hereabouts is the persistent traffic you are likely to encounter. Roads fill up, along with campgrounds and motels. Even remote hiking trails stay relatively busy in the last outdoor rush before winter. Stay away from the big towns like Gatlinburg or Cherokee if you want to avoid crowds, and stick to old logging roads and distant creeks for special colors and fewer traffic jams.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was built expressly for rubbernecking. It is a scenic highway, with no billboards or roadside businesses allowed, and its broad curves and low 45-m.p.h. speed limit make for great color scenes.

If you really want to see colors, and you do not mind traffic, you could start in western North Carolina, at the far end of the Blue Ridge Parkway and follow it into Virginia for 469 miles. At the northern end of the Blue Ridge, you can connect with colorful Skyline Drive into Shenandoah National Park.

Ambitious color watchers can keep going right through eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York, through the Catskills and into Connecticut and New England, where many people believe you can find the best colors anywhere.

If you prefer to stick around North Carolina, try the Maggie Valley area. The town has 200 year-round residents and more than 2,000 motel rooms. It’s off the beaten path of the bigger border towns on the edge of the Smokies.

From there you can travel back roads through the Cataloochee Valley area of the national park, or try back roads through Pisgah National Forest or the Shining Rock Wilderness Area. Colors are guaranteed, crowds are not.

For additional information contact North Carolina Travel and Tourism Division, (800) 847-4862. Virginia Division of Tourism can be reached at (804) 786-2051.

A last, an even lesser-known color viewing area is along the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. In Southern towns on or near the scenic parkway, such as Vicksburg or Natchez, fall colors emerge in late October through November, or later. Magnolias and willows are among regional highlights, and you can treat yourself to Southern hospitality and down-home cooking.

Few people consider this area because the colors turn out after most of the northern leaves are long on the ground. This means that you can have the entire area to yourself. There are plenty of other things to do in the area, with historic sites and the Mississippi River vying for attention.

For more information phone Vicksburg-Warren County Tourism, (800) 221-3536. For statewide tourism information, including the Natchez Trace Parkway, call (800) 647-2290.