Appalachian Fall Foliage

According to Rodney Bartgis of West Virginia’s Nature Conservancy, “The Central and Southern Appalachians support the most diverse temperate deciduous forests on earth”.

For those of you like me who had to look it up, deciduous means the leaves fall off the trees when winter comes.

As all of you who live here or have visited between about mid-September and the 3rd week of October know the days are starting to get shorter and cold fronts start moving through dropping the temps.

According to Science Made Simple this tells the leaves to bail but before they do the cholorophyll in the leaf disappears allowing us to see the small amount of yellow, red, or orange that was green with chlorophyll all summer.

For me, it’s a time of the year where it’s hard to keep your eyes on the road or the trail or keep your body in the office.  Here’s a couple of recommendations for getting out of the office and enjoying fall from a few of this years fall forays:

• Take a road bike (or drive) to the parkway portion of the Highland Scenic Highway in Pocohontas County, WV, one of West Virginia’s signature byways, which rolls on for 22.5 miles where elevations reach 4,545 feet, commercial traffic is prohibited, the max. speed is 45 mpg, and 4 spectacular overlooks await you.
  

• Hit the trail on foot or mountain bike like the new ones we’ve got here in the NRG – the Arrowhead Hike and Bike trails

Take a drive on one of West Virginia’s many Scenic Byways

What about you?  Got any recommendations of places to enjoy fall foliage in Appalachia?

Tags: appalachia fall foliage, fall foliage, green travel, travel green appalachia

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Blog, why Appalachia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.