The Appalachian Magazine

Tag: Chasing Fall Through the Appalachias

  • Chasing Fall Through the Appalachias: White Mountains, New Hampshire

    Chasing Fall Through the Appalachias: White Mountains, New Hampshire

    Climbing Toward Autumn

    Last week, we left Western Maine before the show. The mountains surrounding Rangeley and Bigelow were still largely green, though the first scattered reds and yellows had begun to betray the season ahead. Autumn was moving through Appalachia, but quietly enough that you had to pay attention to find it.

    Now we cross into New Hampshire, where the landscape changes and our pursuit of fall changes with it. The White Mountains rise higher, the roads climb more dramatically, and the Appalachian Trail enters some of the most demanding terrain on its long journey north. Here, elevation complicates the calendar. Summer can linger in a valley while the upper slopes have already begun moving toward another season.

    As of September 15, the White Mountains Foliage Tracker places the region at about 10 percent color. Green still dominates the hillsides, but orange and yellow have begun creeping into lower elevations. Franconia and Pinkham notches are showing yellow higher on the mountains, while portions of the Kancamagus Highway have begun picking up red, orange and yellow, particularly toward its western end and higher ground.

    We are still weeks away from the color that will eventually cover these mountains. Historically, the White Mountains reach their most brilliant foliage during the first two weeks of October. But peak color was never the point of this journey. We’re following autumn as it moves, and in New Hampshire, we’re going higher to meet it.

    Into Franconia Notch

    The road into Franconia Notch State Park wastes little time introducing the White Mountains. Interstate 93 narrows as it enters the pass, with the Franconia Range rising to the east and the Kinsman Range to the west. What appears on a map to be a highway through the mountains begins to feel much more like a road allowed passage between them.

    This is part of the White Mountains Trail, a scenic route connecting Franconia Notch with Crawford Notch, the Kancamagus Highway and other landscapes across the region. It would be possible to spend the day following the road from viewpoint to viewpoint, but it would also be a shame never to step away from it.

    Franconia Notch offers mountain lakes, trails, waterfalls and the unmistakable profile of Cannon Mountain rising above the valley. Near the southern end of the park, however, the landscape draws inward. There, water has opened a passage through stone.

    Inside the Flume

    At Flume Gorge, the enormous scale of the White Mountains suddenly becomes intimate. The natural gorge extends roughly 800 feet along the base of Mount Liberty. Walls of Conway granite rise 70 to 90 feet and, at their narrowest, stand only 12 feet apart. A wooden boardwalk follows Flume Brook through the gorge, passing among ferns, mosses and flowers growing in the damp shelter of the rock walls. At the upper end, Avalanche Falls drops about 45 feet into the gorge.

    It is a very different way to encounter these mountains. Much of what makes the White Mountains famous is enormous: long ridges, high summits and views stretching across miles of forest. Inside the Flume, your attention is pulled closer. Water moves around boulders, ferns spill from cracks in the granite, moss softens stone that otherwise looks immovable, and the boardwalk disappears ahead between walls shaped by water and time.

    In mid-September, much of this forest is still green, and that feels right. We are not seeing autumn after it has finished transforming the landscape. We’re watching the transformation happen. A yellow leaf among green ones matters here, as does a maple somewhere above the rock beginning to change ahead of its neighbors.

    Sometimes a season announces itself across an entire mountainside. Sometimes it starts with one tree.

    The Mountain With the Missing Face

    There is another story written into the stone of Franconia Notch. For generations, five granite ledges high on Cannon Mountain aligned from below to create the profile of a man’s face.

    The Old Man of the Mountain became an emblem of New Hampshire, appearing on license plates, road signs and the state’s quarter. Then, sometime during the night of May 3, 2003, the formation collapsed. People woke to discover that a face seemingly carved into the mountain had disappeared.

    Today, the Old Man of the Mountain Profile Plaza looks toward the cliff where the Old Man once appeared. Steel profilers allow visitors standing in the correct position to recreate the familiar outline against the mountain.

    There is something strangely appropriate about encountering that story while chasing autumn. We speak about mountains as though they are permanent and seasons as though they are fleeting, but the mountains change too. We simply aren’t always here long enough to watch.

    Across the Kancamagus

    From Lincoln, Route 112 begins one of the best-known drives in New England. The Kancamagus Highway travels 34.5 miles through the White Mountain National Forest between Lincoln and Conway. Through its mountain section there are no restaurants, hotels, gas stations or commercial strips interrupting the forest.

    The Swift River follows portions of the road, trailheads disappear beneath the trees, and overlooks open toward mountains that will soon become the subject of countless autumn photographs. Today, however, most of them are still green.

    This is where it becomes tempting to hurry the season, but there is no reason to. The September 15 foliage report is already finding red, orange and yellow along the Kanc, particularly toward the western end and around the height of land, yet the region overall remains only about 10 percent changed.

    The famous October landscape exists here now only in pieces. One hillside has begun to change while another waits. Color gathers around a wetland or appears beside the river. A tree glowing red among hundreds still wearing summer green can attract more attention than an entire red hillside will a few weeks from now.

    Perhaps that’s because right now every changing tree seems to be telling us the same thing.

    It’s coming.

    Through Crawford Notch

    Another road carries us deeper into the mountains. Route 302 passes through Crawford Notch State Park, where steep mountains close around the valley and trails lead toward waterfalls, lakes and high ridges.

    There are ambitious ways to explore this country, and there are quiet ones. A traveler can walk near Saco Lake, stop for a view of Silver Cascade or simply follow the road through the notch while mountains rise on either side.

    That distinction matters in a place celebrated for strenuous hiking. The White Mountains deserve respect. Their trails climb serious terrain, and conditions at elevation can change quickly. But these mountains do not belong only to the people capable of climbing to their summits. You can hike a ridge, walk beside a lake, follow a boardwalk through a gorge or pull safely off the road at an overlook and stand there as long as you please.

    There is no requirement that beauty be earned through exhaustion.

    Autumn settles into Flume Gorge, where a wooden boardwalk follows the rushing water between towering granite walls in Franconia Notch State Park.

    Mount Washington

    Eventually, the mountains lead toward one that seems to exist on a different scale. Mount Washington State Park occupies the summit of the highest peak in the Northeast, 6,288 feet above sea level. On a clear day, the view can extend more than 100 miles across New England and beyond.

    The view is only part of what makes the mountain remarkable. Elevation strips the familiar landscape away as you climb. Forest changes, trees grow shorter, and eventually the sheltered world below gives way to exposed high country where weather can be dramatically different from conditions in the valley.

    In a journey following autumn, that climb gives us something unusual. We can move through the season vertically.

    The Mount Washington Auto Road has carried travelers up the eastern side of the mountain since 1861, while the Mount Washington Cog Railway climbs from the west. Hiking trails provide another route, though reaching the summit on foot is a serious mountain undertaking rather than a casual autumn walk.

    Whichever way you experience the mountain, the lesson is similar. Down below, September may still look like summer. Keep climbing and the illusion becomes harder to maintain. Cold arrives sooner up here, and so does autumn.

    A Trail Through the High Country

    The Appalachian Trail has been accompanying us since this journey began in Maine. In the White Mountains, its personality changes.

    Here, the trail crosses exposed ridges and high summits, including some of the most demanding terrain along the entire route from Georgia to Maine. The forest that shelters hikers farther south sometimes falls away, leaving rock, sky and rapidly changing mountain weather. It is also here that the trail intersects with a tradition distinctive to the White Mountains: the mountain huts.

    The Appalachian Mountain Club operates a network of backcountry huts reached on foot throughout the region. Some sit within the forest. Others occupy the high country where the landscape has already left most trees behind.

    Lakes of the Clouds Hut sits at 5,012 feet below Mount Monroe. Reaching it from the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trailhead requires a strenuous three-mile climb, and its 2026 full-service season continues through September 19. A little farther north in the Presidential Range, Madison Spring Hut sits at 4,600 feet between Mount Adams and Mount Madison, with its full-service season continuing through September 26.

    These aren’t hotels that happen to have mountain views. You have to walk to them, and that changes their place in the landscape. Hikers arrive from different directions and for different reasons. Some are traveling the Appalachian Trail toward Maine. Others are crossing the Presidential Range, climbing a summit or spending a few days in the mountains.

    For a night, their paths meet. Morning sends them apart again.

    There is something fitting about that temporary community in the Appalachians: people gathering in an isolated place, sharing shelter and a meal, trading pieces of their journeys and then continuing down separate paths. The huts belong to the mountains, but they also belong to the human story of walking through them.

    The Communities Below

    Eventually, everyone has to come down. The valleys beneath the White Mountains are dotted with communities that have spent generations living alongside people arriving to hike, ski, fish, sightsee, ride trains, climb mountains or simply disappear into the woods for a few days.

    Lincoln and North Woodstock sit near the western end of the Kancamagus. Franconia and Sugar Hill lie beyond the notch, while North Conway and Jackson sit on the eastern side of the mountains. These communities give the journey a human scale.

    A bakery after a cold morning outside doesn’t need to be famous to become memorable. Neither does an old inn, a cup of cider or a table somewhere near a window when the light begins disappearing from the mountains. This is where local businesses belong in our journey, not as attractions competing with the landscape, but as part of the communities living beneath it.

    Stay somewhere small if that suits you. Eat somewhere local. Wander through a village rather than driving directly to the next overlook. The mountains tell only part of the story of the White Mountains. People have been making lives beneath them for a very long time.

    When Fall Reaches the Towns

    By September, the changing season begins appearing in ways that have nothing to do with foliage reports. Apples return, cider follows, and cool evenings make a warm meal feel different than it did in August. Farm stands begin looking like autumn even when the mountains behind them don’t.

    The calendar starts changing too. On September 15, the regional events calendar marks the opening of Much Ado About Nothing at the Weathervane Theatre, one reminder that a day in the White Mountains does not have to end when the trail does.

    These details are easy to overlook when the mountains are demanding attention, but they are also part of what we’re following. Autumn is more than chlorophyll disappearing from leaves. It changes what people eat, what they wear, what happens in town and how early everyone notices the evening arriving.

    The mountains may not yet look like October, but the communities beneath them already know October is coming.

    Before the Mountains Burn Bright

    If you came to the White Mountains this week expecting entire mountainsides covered in red, orange and gold, you arrived early. For our journey, you arrived at exactly the right time.

    The White Mountains are at roughly 10 percent color. Franconia and Pinkham notches are beginning to show yellow at higher elevations. The western Kancamagus is picking up scattered reds, oranges and yellows, while most of the landscape remains green.

    In another few weeks, much of this will be transformed. The White Mountains typically reach their strongest color during the first two weeks of October, although elevation, tree species and weather ensure that no single date can promise peak foliage everywhere.

    Come then and the mountains may give you the grand spectacle. Come now and they give you something else: the beginning.

    There is a peculiar pleasure in recognizing a season before it becomes impossible to miss.

    Plan Your White Mountains Journey

    The White Mountains Visitors Center is a useful starting point for current information on scenic drives, lodging, attractions, events and recreation throughout the region.

    If foliage is part of the reason for your trip, check both New Hampshire’s official Fall Foliage Tracker and the regional White Mountains Foliage Tracker shortly before leaving. Both are more useful than planning around a historical peak date because the season progresses differently each year.

    For hikers, the Appalachian Mountain Club provides information on trails, huts and backcountry planning. AMC also operates a White Mountains hiker shuttle on selected days into October, although its schedule should be checked before relying on it for transportation.

    For Mount Washington, check current operating conditions directly with the Mount Washington Auto Road or Mount Washington Cog Railway. Summit conditions can be dramatically different from the weather below, so mountain forecasts deserve attention even when the valley looks perfectly inviting.

    If you plan to visit the Flume, check current information through New Hampshire State Parks before setting out. The complete loop is about two miles and includes uphill walking, boardwalks and numerous stairs, and advance reservations are recommended because entry windows can sell out.

    Once the practical planning is finished, leave a little of the trip unplanned. Follow the road through one more notch, stop beside the river, walk into the woods or find somewhere warm when you’re hungry.

    And if the mountains are greener than the photograph you imagined before you came, don’t be disappointed.

    Look closer.

    Chasing Fall South

    We entered the White Mountains looking for autumn. At first, summer seemed reluctant to let it through. Green still covered the valleys, the forests around the Flume remained lush, and from a distance many of the mountains looked much as they had weeks before.

    Then we began to climb. Yellow appeared higher in the notches. Red and orange interrupted the green along the Kancamagus. The air changed as the road gained elevation, and somewhere above the trees, the high country had already moved farther into the season than the valleys below.

    For a little while, we caught up.

    But autumn is still moving. Behind us, Maine is turning. Soon the White Mountains will follow, and the scattered color we see today will spread across slopes that are still green.

    We won’t be here when that happens. We’re chasing fall south, and the mountains ahead are waiting.

  • Chasing Fall Through the Appalachias: Western Maine

    Chasing Fall Through the Appalachias: Western Maine

    Where Autumn Takes the Back Roads

    Autumn has begun its journey through Appalachia, but it is in no hurry.

    Last week, we began beneath the shadow of Katahdin, where the first hints of color were appearing across the northern Maine wilderness. Now we turn southwest, following the mountains toward Rangeley, Carrabassett Valley and the long ridges of Bigelow, into a part of Maine where September still belongs partly to summer.

    The forests are mostly green. The lakes still reflect mountains wearing their summer colors, and warm afternoons can make autumn seem farther away than it really is. Then comes a cool morning, a maple touched with red along the roadside, or a streak of yellow appearing on a distant slope.

    The season is here. It simply hasn’t announced itself loudly yet.

    That is part of the pleasure of chasing fall rather than waiting for peak foliage. Autumn is not something that happens to the mountains overnight. It gathers slowly, almost tree by tree, until one day the landscape we thought we knew has become something entirely different.

    In Western Maine, we have arrived in time to watch it begin.

    The Road Into Rangeley

    There are places best discovered after you leave the fastest road behind.

    The Rangeley Lakes region is one of them.

    Here, lakes stretch beneath wooded mountains, roads rise and fall with the land, and the Appalachian landscape seems to open a little farther with every bend. Rangeley sits among six large lakes and hundreds of smaller ponds and waterways, with mountains rising beyond them and the Appalachian Trail crossing the surrounding high country.

    The Rangeley Lakes National Scenic Byway offers one of the loveliest ways into this landscape. It winds through mountain and lake country where the temptation to keep driving competes constantly with the temptation to pull over.

    Eventually, there is one place where you should.

    On Route 17, Height of Land overlooks Mooselookmeguntic Lake and Upper Richardson Lake, their long blue waters reaching between mountains and forested ridges.

    It is an enormous view.

    In October, people come here for hillsides washed in red, orange and gold. But early September offers something quieter. Green still claims most of the mountains, while the first changing trees appear almost like brushstrokes across the landscape.

    Stand here long enough and it becomes easier to understand what we are chasing.

    Not simply color, but change.

    Stay Awhile in Rangeley

    Rangeley is the kind of mountain town that gives you reasons to put away the itinerary for a while.

    The lakes have drawn people here for generations, particularly anglers, but there are plenty of ways to experience the region without ever casting a line. Hiking trails disappear into the surrounding woods. Canoes and kayaks slip onto quiet water. Roads wander toward overlooks, ponds and mountains that seem to invite one more detour.

    At nearly 900 acres, Rangeley Lake State Park stretches along the southern shore of Rangeley Lake and offers camping, boating, swimming and access to the water. It can also be something much simpler: a place to sit beside a Maine lake and watch the mountains on the opposite shore.

    Rangeley’s history as a destination is still visible around those lakes. Generations before foliage reports helped travelers time an autumn drive, sporting camps were bringing visitors into Western Maine to fish, hunt and spend time in the woods.

    Near Oquossoc, Bald Mountain Camps grew from that tradition. Its history reaches into the 1800s, and today the second-generation family-run property has just 14 log cabins. Private porches, fireplaces or wood stoves keep some of the character of the old Maine sporting-camp experience intact.

    Along the northeastern shore of Rangeley Lake, North Camps takes a similarly small-scale approach. Thirteen rustic cabins sit across 20 wooded acres, with screened porches, wood stoves, a private beach and canoes and kayaks available for guests. The camps remain open into the fall hunting season, when September’s cool nights begin giving way to the colder days ahead.

    And on Rangeley Lake, Loon Lodge Inn & Restaurant occupies a restored lodge that has been welcoming guests since 1899. Today it combines guest rooms with a restaurant and pub overlooking the lake. During the warmer season, boaters can even arrive from the water to dock and dine.

    None of these places is necessary to experience Rangeley, and they are far from the region’s only choices. But together they preserve something interesting about the way people have long traveled here.

    The mountains are not scenery you return to after leaving your hotel in the morning. In places like these, the lake and woods remain just outside the door.

    The Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce maintains current information on these and other lodging options throughout the area.

    A Town Between the Lakes and Mountains

    It would be easy to come to Rangeley, photograph the scenery and keep driving.

    It would also mean missing part of the place.

    Downtown, older buildings continue to serve new generations. Furbish Brew House & Eats occupies a restored 1912 building where original wood trim and hutches remain. A brick oven built inside by a Maine artist now turns out wood-fired pizzas, and the building is also home to Rangeley’s first brewery.

    That mixture of old and new feels appropriate here. Western Maine carries its history without needing to freeze itself inside it.

    For something simpler in the morning, Classic Provisions operates as a small café, breakfast and sandwich stop, and gourmet market on Main Street. On Thursdays, its back parking lot becomes the Downtown Farmers Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., bringing together organic produce and meats, locally made products and work from area artists.

    On Tuesdays, the South Shore Drive Farmers Market offers another opportunity to encounter the region beyond its overlooks.

    A farmers market may seem like a small thing beside a mountain range, but that is partly why it matters.

    These mountains are not an empty wilderness arranged for visitors. People live here, make things here, grow food here and gather here.

    The mountains may bring you to Rangeley, but the community tells you where you are.

    Walk With Someone Who Knows the Country

    September also offers opportunities to get out of the car and experience the landscape more closely.

    The Rangeley region’s T.R.A.C. program organizes guided hikes and paddles on Tuesdays and Fridays with local volunteer leaders familiar with the routes they lead. On September 8, the date of this stop on our Chasing Fall journey, both T.R.A.C. and the South Shore Drive Farmers Market were on the local calendar.

    There is something fitting about that.

    You can certainly explore Western Maine independently. But walking a trail or paddling a stretch of water with someone familiar with the country can reveal things easily missed when the goal is simply reaching the next viewpoint.

    For travelers following this journey later in the season, the Rangeley Region events calendar is worth checking before a visit. Markets, guided outings and seasonal events change throughout the year.

    Stories Behind the Scenery

    Near Rangeley in Oquossoc, the Outdoor Heritage Museum offers another way to understand why these lakes and mountains have drawn people for so long.

    Its collections explore the region’s outdoor history, including guides, sporting traditions and the people whose lives became connected to the woods and waters of Western Maine. That history helps place the old camps around Rangeley in a larger story.

    On September 19, the museum holds its Fall Festival, with Maine arts, crafts and antiques vendors gathering on the museum grounds as cooler weather begins settling over the region.

    For travelers whose dates happen to align, a small local festival can become an unexpected part of an autumn trip. For everyone else, the museum offers something equally valuable: context.

    Scenery becomes richer when you begin learning the stories held inside it.

    Deeper Into the Western Mountains

    Eventually, the road calls again.

    South and east of Rangeley, Route 27 follows the mountains through Kingfield and Carrabassett Valley, where the Carrabassett River threads through a valley surrounded by some of Maine’s highest country. Mount Abraham rises nearby. Sugarloaf dominates part of the skyline. Beyond it waits the unmistakable profile of the Bigelow Range.

    The Maine Appalachians feel bigger here.

    Carrabassett Valley is well known as the home of Sugarloaf, but winter is only one chapter in the life of these mountains. Hiking and mountain biking trails spread through the valley and surrounding forests. The Appalachian Trail crosses the high country nearby, while Maine Huts & Trails reaches through the backcountry toward Flagstaff Lake.

    If hunger catches up somewhere along the way, The Bag & Kettle has been part of Carrabassett Valley for decades. It is one of those longstanding local stops that can simply become part of a day spent moving through the mountains rather than a destination around which the day needs to be built.

    Because the landscape is still the reason we came.

    In September, there is a particular pleasure in driving these mountain roads before autumn reaches its crescendo. A hillside can appear almost entirely green from a distance, only to reveal scattered red maples as the road draws closer. Higher slopes begin changing on a different schedule from sheltered valleys, and morning fog may hide a ridge that appears again beneath blue sky an hour later.

    The mountains reveal themselves gradually.

    So does the season.

    Beneath the Bigelow Range

    Then Bigelow Preserve appears.

    The preserve surrounding it protects more than 36,000 acres of mountain wilderness, including the entire Bigelow Range and seven summits. West Peak rises to 4,150 feet, placing it among Maine’s ten summits above 4,000 feet. To the north, the mountains descend toward the broad waters of Flagstaff Lake.

    The Appalachian Trail crosses the range on its long journey toward Katahdin.

    For experienced hikers prepared for mountain terrain, Bigelow offers the opportunity to climb into a landscape where ridges seem to roll away toward the horizon. The high country is beautiful, but it should be approached with respect. Weather changes, distances are real, and a mountain that looks inviting from the valley remains a mountain once you begin climbing it.

    Fortunately, Bigelow does not reserve its beauty for those who reach the summit.

    Travelers can experience the range from Route 27 through Carrabassett Valley, from Cathedral Pines in Eustis and from the overlook on Eustis Ridge. Each offers a different relationship with the mountains.

    There is no single correct way to experience Appalachia. Some of us meet a mountain by climbing it. Others follow the road beneath it, stop at an overlook, walk a gentler trail or simply stand somewhere beautiful and look up.

    The mountain does not ask how you arrived.

    Where the Mountains Meet the Water

    On the northern side of Bigelow, the landscape changes again.

    Flagstaff Lake spreads beneath the mountains, giving travelers the chance to look back toward the Bigelow Range from the water. From a canoe or kayak, the scale of the mountains becomes apparent in a different way. Forest rises from the shoreline toward the ridges, and the long mountain profile follows the lake.

    As September deepens into October, that forest will become part of the spectacle.

    Imagine paddling across cool water while autumn climbs the mountains ahead of you, the shoreline beginning to glow with yellow and red and the higher ridges rising beyond it.

    For now, the transformation is subtler.

    Flagstaff is also part of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a 740-mile paddling route connecting waterways across New York, Vermont, Quebec, New Hampshire and Maine. Visitors do not need to undertake anything remotely that ambitious to appreciate this stretch of it. Even a much smaller encounter with the lake can change the way you see Bigelow.

    For travelers wanting to move deeper into the landscape, Maine Huts & Trails maintains a trail and hut system connecting parts of Carrabassett Valley and the Flagstaff Lake region. Reaching the huts requires human-powered travel rather than simply driving to the door, making them an option for those wanting to leave the road behind for a while.

    Some places ask you to slow down before they reveal very much.

    Western Maine is one of them.

    Before the Mountains Turn

    If you come to Western Maine in early September expecting mountains blazing with peak foliage, you have arrived too soon.

    But perhaps not at the wrong time.

    Western Maine generally reaches peak fall color around the second week of October. In early September, much of the landscape is still green, and the transition is only beginning.

    There is beauty in catching autumn before everyone agrees that autumn has arrived.

    You notice smaller things: one red branch extending over a road, yellow gathering at the edge of a pond, a cold morning that makes you reach for another layer, the smell of damp leaves beneath trees that still look like summer, a little more darkness arriving each evening.

    None of it is dramatic on its own. Together, it is unmistakable.

    The mountains are turning toward autumn.

    Come Back for the Color

    There is another wonderful thing about seeing Western Maine now.

    You know what is coming.

    In another few weeks, the view from Height of Land will be transformed. Color will gather around Rangeley’s lakes. Carrabassett Valley will deepen into autumn, and the slopes beneath Bigelow will carry the season from the waterline toward the high ridges.

    The roads we have followed through mostly green mountains will become some of Maine’s great fall drives.

    Perhaps that is reason enough to come twice.

    Come in September to watch autumn begin.

    Come back in October to see what it became.

    Plan Your Western Maine Journey

    Western Maine is better suited to wandering than rushing, so give yourself enough time to explore beyond a single scenic drive if you can.

    The Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce is a useful starting point for current lodging, restaurants, local attractions, events and recreation. The Maine Office of Tourism’s Rangeley Lakes guide provides broader information for planning time in the region.

    For Bigelow Preserve, Flagstaff Lake and Maine’s public reserved lands, consult the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. Travelers interested in the hut and trail network around Carrabassett Valley and Flagstaff Lake can find current information through Maine Huts & Trails.

    The Rangeley Region events calendar is worth checking shortly before a trip for farmers markets, guided outings, museum programs and other seasonal happenings.

    Most importantly for our particular journey, keep the Maine Fall Foliage Report close. Conditions are updated throughout foliage season, which is far more useful than assuming autumn will follow exactly the same calendar every year.

    Mountain weather deserves respect in any season. Check current conditions before hiking or paddling, carry what your route requires and remember that temperatures and weather at higher elevations can differ considerably from those in the valleys.

    Then leave some empty space in the itinerary.

    Take the road you had not planned to take. Stop at the overlook. Walk down to the water. Browse a market if you happen upon one. Sit somewhere local when you get hungry.

    Western Maine will probably find something to put in the spaces you left open.

    Chasing Fall South

    We could stay in Western Maine.

    That may be the hardest part of chasing autumn through Appalachia. Every place we visit is still changing when it is time for us to leave.

    Behind us, Rangeley’s lakes will soon be surrounded by color. Carrabassett Valley will move deeper into the season. Bigelow will stand above forests transformed by October, and somewhere along the Appalachian Trail, hikers will walk beneath a canopy that looks nothing like the one above them today.

    But autumn is moving south.

    So are we.

    Next week, we cross into New Hampshire and enter the White Mountains, where roads climb through mountain passes, the Appalachian Trail crosses some of its most storied terrain and Mount Washington rises above a landscape already beginning to feel the approach of fall.

    For now, Western Maine remains behind us, still mostly green, still quietly changing.

    We arrived before the show.

    And somehow, that made it worth seeing.