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| "Overlooking the Columbia in the Rain" |
Every year my wife and I take a trip to photograph the fall foliage somewhere in the U.S. This year I didn't have the energy for a flight to the East Coast—we live in California—so we decided on a car tour of Oregon. We spent 11 days completing a loop from San Jose to Portland and back, making stops at Castle Crags State Park, Mt. Shasta City, Ashland, Klamath Falls, Bend, Salem (via McKenzie Pass), Portland, the Columbia River Gorge, Lake Oswego, Silver Falls State Park, Cottage Grove and the Row River, Garberville (via Grants Pass), and Mendocino. The weather was a continual problem. It rained most days, at times heavily, and snowed twice. Still, gray days have a beauty all their own, and the colors of fall leaves are often saturated and stunning under overcast skies.
To see the pictures I took, click here, and make sure to turn on the titles.
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Copyright © 2012 by Ken Marks
Editor's Note: Modesty of course prevents Ken from saying that his photographs are exquisite. Do not miss this opportunity to feast your eyes on transporting beauty.
Interesting to see scenes of my childhood (Dunsmuir, Mt. Shasta, Fort Bragg and Mendocino) through another's eyes six decades later.
ReplyDeleteKen, thank you for the fantastic West Coast fall travelogue! I really like the way you include some people and buildings in some of the images and that you don't do just the cliche sunny day photos. You mentioned traveling the U.S. to do take photos: do you have a vote on the prettiest fall foliage areas around the country?
ReplyDeleteSlightly unrelated: do you by any chance have a gallery of images of the San Luis Obispo region posted anywhere?
I like New England best, and of the New England states, I favor New Hampshire. I've also been to Nova Scotia, which closely rivals New England, especially Cape Breton Island. In the West, Utah is my choice. I like the Logan area and the Wasatch Mountains.
DeleteThe SLO area is one of my favorites, not for fall but for spring. I specialize in Hwy 58 (northeast of SLO, out of Santa Margarita), Morro Bay, and Cambria. If you're interested, I have links.
Ken, yes, would love to have links to anything relating to SLO, planning to move there in hopefully a very few years.
ReplyDeleteIf you rate New Hampshire above Cape Breton it must be spectacular. I've seen it only in winter and summer but I did a bicycle tour of Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island one autumn and was amazed. An early season nor'easter made the pedaling and camping fairly miserable but the scenery was astounding. For me, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Minnesota rank close behind.
Have you tried the Blue Ridge or Smoky Mountains in the fall? If so, what do you think of them? I was raised minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and was indoctrinated to believe that was the best foliage in the world. A couple of autumn trips in the north undid that bit of brainwashing, but they do attract quite the traffic jam in leaf season.
Moto, I'll send you the links via email.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention the Smoky Mountains. They're at the top of my must-see list. Would have gone there this year, but the thought of a coach flight — I'm 6'5" — was too much for me.
If you want to do a trip comparable to the one you just did on the West Coast, you could do a Great Smoky Mountains National Park/Blue Ridge Parkway/Shenandoah National Park combo tour. You could fly into Raleigh, NC (RDU airport) head west to the Smokies, then drive the Blue Ridge Parkway north to Afton Mountain near Charlottesville, VA. From there follow the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park, then head east toward Washington, DC and fly out of Dulles.
ReplyDeleteYou don't want to do that trip in reverse order unless you enjoy driving toward the setting sun. Prime fall foliage here is generally mid to late October. Don't expect it to be as spectacular as New England or you will be disappointed. At 6'5" you will still be cramped but at least at airports like RDU and Dulles they use "real" full-sized jets, unlike some of our secondary airfields.
Thanks for the guidance, Moto.
DeleteKen, I'm delighted that your photos struck such a responsive chord so close to home (among your co-contributing editors). I see from blog statistics, that there have been 50 pageviews, so I am confident that your photos have struck a number more of responsive chords than Tom's and motomynd's, even if they haven't commented here.
ReplyDelete