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Cuyahoga Falls National Park, Death Valley National Park, Destination, Destination Ideas, fall travel, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Hot Springs National Park, RV Destinations, Shenandoah National Park, Travel, Travel Destination, US Traveling
Ah, autumn – the world appears to have been repainted, as red, gold and sienna orange leaves contrast with the blue sky. For many travelers, fall is their favorite time to hit the road.
But there’s more to see than the leaves. As those they fall to the ground, the landscape opens up, allowing you to spot interesting geological features or terrain that summer’s green foliage keeps hidden. More animal sightings also are possible as birds migrate while mammals gorge in preparation for winter’s cold. As the foliage no longer is as thick, seeing them is easier.
America’s national parks offer a number of great places to experience autumn’s beauty. And with summer vacation over, many of the parks will be less crowded.
Six national parks particularly deliver great autumn experiences for travelers.
Cuyahoga Falls National Park
Brandywine Falls ranks among the most popular of the Ohio park’s several waterfalls. The area surrounding the falls is gorgeous in October beneath autumn leaves, and the Brandywine Gorge Trail leading to it is shaded almost the entire way by red maples and eastern hemlocks. With a combination of segments from the Stanford Road Metro Parks Bike and Hike Trail, the gorge trail loops 1.5 miles to the falls then back to the trailhead with several crossings of Brandywine Creek.
Great Sand Dunes National Park
Most people visit this Colorado park for the sand dunes soaring 60-plus stories in the sky. There’s more to the park than dunes, though. The Montville Trail provides an excellent sample of that as it heads into the surrounding mountains. The 0.5-mile loop partially runs alongside a creek, where the golden canopy of cottonwood and aspen trees sends you to an autumn wonderland.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The 1-mile round trip Clingmans Dome Trail heads to the highest spot in the national park and Tennessee and the third tallest east of the Mississippi. Autumn leaves on the road to Clingmans Dome usually change about mid-October, offering a spectacular red, orange and yellow display. At the dome’s top, views of those swaths of harvest colors can stretch for up to a hundred miles in all directions.
Hot Springs National Park
Though hardly thoughts of as a backcountry wilderness experience, the Arkansas park does offer a number of forested trails to enjoy. The best in autumn is the Hot Springs Mountain Trail. Heading through a beautiful mixed hardwood and pine forest, the route offers a gorgeous fall leaf display – and cooler temperatures than during muggy summer.
Shenandoah National Park
Spectacular autumn color views await day hikers on the Stony Man Trail, a segment of the famous Appalachian National Scenic Trail. At the trail’s top, you’ll be rewarded with an expansive view of the Shenandoah Valley and the Massanutten and Allegheny Mountains beyond, their trees alit in harvest colors, as you breathe in clean, crisp air.
Death Valley National Park
OK, there’s no autumn leaves here at all – but September’s cooler temperatures ensure you actually can leave an air conditioned vehicle for a lot longer than a minute to experience the forbidding desert landscape. Among the best places in the California park to visit is the Golden Canyon Interpretive Trail, where you can learn to read rocks that tell the tale of how a lake once here vanished.
About the author:
Rob Bignell is the author of several hiking books, including the bestselling “Best Sights to See at America’s National Parks.”
R.B.; Post Falls, ID ~ “I could not have asked for better service from Coach-Net and the tow driver. Very helpful, responsive and professional. Both helped take a lot of the trauma out of a tow.”
Nothing quite so effectively displays Mother Nature’s beauty than a sunrise or sunset, those few moments each day when the world shines golden and with incredible serenity.
Day hikers can walk to one of the first spots where the sun touches America each morning via the South Ridge Trail in Maine’s Acadia National Park. The trail is a 7.2-miles round trip to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is the highest summit on the Eastern seaboard. Though the hike would be done in the dark, with moonglow and flashlights, the trail is traversable. Acadia’s ancient granite peaks are among the first places in the United States where the sunrise can be seen. Be sure to bring a blanket to lay out on the cold rock and take a seat looking southeast.
Fairyland really does exist – it’s smack dab in south central Utah, where a maze of totem pole-like rock formations called hoodoos grace Bryce Canyon National Park. Hoodoos are unusual landforms in which a hard caprock slows the erosion of the softer mineral beneath it. The result is a variety of fantastical shapes. Take the Queens Garden Trail, which descends into the fantasyland of hoodoos. When hiking during the early morning, sunrise’s orange glow magically lights the trail’s contours.
About 1 million Mexican Freetail bats live in Carlsbad Caverns. During the day, they rest on the ceiling of Bat Cave, a passageway closed to the public. At sunset, to feed for the evening, the bats dramatically swarm out of the cave in a tornadic-like spiral, their silhouettes stretching into the distant horizon. An open-air amphitheater allows visitors to safely watch the bats’ departure in an event called The Night Flight. The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail, a half-mile loop, also allows you to watch the bats disperse across the New Mexican desert.
Among the Grand Canyon National Park’s most spectacular sights – sunrise and sunset – can be seen within walking distance of Grand Canyon Village in Arizona. While the South Rim Trail extends several miles along the canyon edge, you only have to walk to Mather Point, where views of the canyon shift like pictures in a marquee at both sunrise and sunset. Another great spot that’s a little less crowded is Ooh Ahh Point on the South Kaibab Trail, which is east of the village and south of Yaki Point. The aptly named Ooh Ahh Point is less than 200 feet below the rim.
You can enjoy views of sunrises and sunsets covering up to a hundred miles on the Clingmans Dome Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At 6625 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in Tennessee and along the Appalachian Trail, as well as the third tallest east of the Mississippi. A half-mile trip leads to the summit. How incredible are the sunsets? They can be crowded, as those hoping to photograph the stunning scenery line up 45 minutes before the sun descends.
A full 95 percent of Florida’s Biscayne National Park sits underwater, a turquoise blue paradise laced with vividly colored coral reefs – and nothing quite says romance like a sunset over this tropical ocean. Adams Key offers a quarter-mile trail from the dock through the hardwood hammock on the island’s west side; most of the route skirts the beach, where the sunset can be enjoyed.
Clambering over boulders and ambling across strangely angled slickrock – and watching needles aglow at sunset – await on Canyonlands National Park’s Slickrock Trail in southeastern Utah. The 2.9-mile loop trail generally follows a mesa rim. Plan to walk the trail about an hour or so before sunset; on the final mile, tall thin rock formations called needles fill the horizon, glowing crimson as the sun sets.
From rare California poppies to sweet-scented phlox, wildflowers begin to bloom this month across much of the country. Filling green meadows, desert basins, and forest floors, wildflowers bring a special beauty that usually can only be seen for a few weeks.
Each spring, brilliant orange California poppies, lavender-colored bush lupine, and white mariposa lilies blossom across the nation’s newest national park. To see a variety of them at different elevations and from a number of vistas, take the High Peaks and Bear Gulch trails.
From late June through early August, summer wildflower blooms are at their peak. Check out the Swiftcurrent Lake Loop Trail for meadows strewn with purple asters, white torch-shaped clusters of beargrass, and sun yellow glacier lilies, all with majestic mountains as a backdrop.
Amid the high desert is an oasis of summer wildflowers on the Alpine Lakes Trail. Spring-fed Lehman Creek flows into a lake and supports Parry’s primrose, penstemon, and phlox, all set against vibrant green grass. Butterflies are abundant here as well.