October Colors 2011

When Karen and I went up into Michigan in September there were just slight hints of fall color here and there. We decided to try to make another trip up there in October in hopes of catching a little more fall foliage. So Thursday afternoon Oct 6 we headed up State Road 13 in our old grey Pontiac for a fast road trip. We got to Elk Rapids just after sunset.

I thought the shot with the moon shining between the spars was pretty nice.

The next morning, Friday the 7th, we headed out for the day with no particular destination in mind, other than to try to find some colorful tree lined roads.

It didn't take too long to find some.

The green fields of September had by this time given way to warm browns and tans.

Some times there is a tree with brilliant color amongst darker green trees.

Other times the color is uniformly distributed.

These two pictures illustrate how different tree species look under similar conditions. Besides I think the gnarly old trees below are kind of interesting looking.

It seemed that we had hit the leaf color just about right. Everywhere we turned there were spectacular colors.

We found an access point along a river and although the color was not as prominent the element of water added a lot to the view.

I thought the outcropping was an interesting contrast to the fall color.

Here's Karen waiting in our old grey Pontiac while I'm off taking picture of roadside flowers.

We spent the whole day driving from one beautiful view after another.

Eventually we had to head on home, as the sun was beginning to fade into the west. Even so we stopped several times to capture a really nice photo or two.

As the sun was just above the horizon we stopped at a rest area along the highway. There were a couple of really nice specimen trees that seemed to just glow.

With the fading light even a gnarly old dude seemed to glow a bit.

All in all it was a really nice trip we drove the whole thing up and back with the top down and had a ball.