Banner year for fall colours in New England
It’s official: Yankee Magazine, the prestigious publication for all things happening in New England, has announced that conditions are near perfect for this year’s fall foliage viewing in the Northeastern states ranging from Connecticut and Rhode Island to Maine and Vermont. Apparently, the countryside there will be aflame with red, yellow and orange leaves, drawing hundreds of thousands of excited viewers in cars and buses.
The season will begin in late September in northern Vermont and Maine, and will extend through the end of October in Rhode Island and Virginia. Numerous viewing calendars can be found on the internet by simply searching for “fall foliage.”
But after choosing the correct dates for viewing these spectacles, how can you then avoid the crowds that also have been drawn to the same areas?
Here’s how: Plunk yourself down in a small and littleknown town, says Yankee Magazine. Choose a base, such as Montgomery or Lindenville in Vermont, leave your own car at home and make short trips by alternative transportation into the areas just outside those locations. Go bicycling outside New England fall foliage.
Lindenville (a key activity in that picturesque place), where you’ll be socializing with people who flocked to Lindenville beginning in the 1960s and are now the best kind of “oldster,” pursuing an egalitarian, nonmaterial life.
The magazine also suggests that you seek out the several heritage railways in New England, which will take you along narrow tracks through the heart of fall foliage, in areas where there are few highways lined with motorists. These heritage railways can be used for a round trip, and you never will be stuck on an asphalt roadway dawdling behind sightseers driving their cars at 6 miles per hour.
Many of these “secret” locations and alternate routes can be found described in the current September/October 2017 edition of Yankee Magazine. And supplementary information is found on the magazine’s website, NewEngland.com.