Travel dilemmas: Watch fall colors in Arizona
Answer: I snickered when I received this query from the Kirschenbaums, the same way I snickered 25 years ago when I moved to California and someone asked me to take a fall color day trip. Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson.
But I did learn about the why of fall colors, thanks to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and the where of them, thanks to California.
Fallcolor.com, the U.S. Forest Service (whose forests are divided into ranger districts) and the Arizona Office of Tourism.
Fall in the Southwest is different in ways you might not expect. John Poimiroo, editor and publisher of Californiafallcolor.com, which focuses on the Golden State but occasionally strays to Arizona, Japan and other color spots, explained it to me this way: New England has “quaint towns and architecturally interesting places.
“We have these grand landscapes with color that goes up 1,000 feet in elevation,” said Poimiroo, whose website bears the tag, “Dude, autumn happens here, too.”
“It’s a completely different experience.”
Just as the viewing is different, so too are the trees’ color transformation, said Andrew Richardson, a professor at the center for ecosystem science and society, part of Northern Arizona University’s College of Engineering, Forestry and Natural Sciences.
Sugar maples may be the stars of the show in the East, but in Arizona and beyond, aspens take center stage, supported by cottonwoods, canyon maple and ash.
Aspens have that natural yellow color, but it’s hidden, Richardson said. As the Fall colors on the North Kaibab in Arizona.
days get shorter and cooler, the “plant gets the signal that winter is coming, and it stops generating the chlorophyll in its leaves. As concentrations decline, it’s no longer masking those (yellow) pigments.” In the East, plants manufacture reddish and purplish pigments that give sensational scarlets. find abundant ornamental trees.”
Apache-sitgreaves National Forests, east-central Arizona: Iris Estes, acting deputy public affairs officer for this national forest, likes the Alpine and Springerville districts. “They are at higher elevation than the other districts and have better aspen stands,” she said in an e-mail.
And, she said, “To me the best time of day for viewing is early morning or evening. The sun makes the colors ... pop at these times.”
Others mentioned by the Arizona Office of Tourism: Flagstaff, south of the San Francisco Peaks; Payson, about 90 miles northeast of Phoenix in the Tonto National Forest; Oak Creek Canyon in Coconino National Forest, about 10 miles northeast of Sedona; and the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona, part of the Coronado National Forest.