Chasing the Fall Colours

Last Tuesday turned out to be a glorious fall day, and when my physio was unexpectedly cancelled, we decided to head out for our annual drive down through the valley to see the fall colours.  It was a long drive and I took 140+ pictures, so even after narrowing them down this is going to be several posts - but there's nowhere better than the Beaver Valley for fall colour, so here we go.

Let me start you off right in our backyard with one of our changing Sugar Maples, just so you know what we're looking for.

We headed south out of town, about a 20 minute drive to get into the valley proper.  This is Frogs Hollow which we drive through on the way.

Soon we're far enough south to see the distant colour on the slopes of the Niagara Escarpment.

Our favourite road on this annual jaunt is Lanktree Drive, a road that goes up the slope north of the former Talisman Ski Resort to serve a small subdivision of ski chalets.  It's also a lot safer to stop and pull over to get pictures once you are off the main road.

I could have spent the entire afternoon getting pictures just on this short road.

Apart from the bullrushes in the foreground, this is still a very distant view, but all the Sugar Maples, which provide the orange and red colours, seem to have turned at once.  Most of the ash lose their leaves first and are now looking bare; the evergreens keep their needles, so there will be bands of green all winter.  

And we did get much closer to individual trees as we drove up the slope.  More of those soon.

I cannot resist this one last photo, for I think it is the only time I have caught an individual leaf falling in mid-air!