Eight Drives Worth Doing This Fall, and Exactly When to Go

Every fall someone asks me where to go, and every year I give the same answer, which is that the question is really about when. Colour is a two week event. Miss it by ten days and you have driven a long way to look at a brown hillside.

So this is the list I actually use. Eight drives, the window that matters for each one, and somewhere to put the trailer at the end of the day.

On that last point I have been strict. Every campground here takes a 27 foot trailer, which is the longest Bowlus we build. Plenty of beautiful campgrounds cap out at 21 or 25 feet, and finding that out at the entrance booth after a six hour drive is its own kind of misery. Where a site is close to the limit, I have said so.

One note before you book. Most of these close between the eleventh and the end of October, and the good ones went months ago in foliage season. If something here appeals to you, reserve it today rather than at the weekend.

1. Highway 395, Eastern Sierra, California

Go mid to late October. The forecast is better here this year than almost anywhere else in the country, because the Sierra largely avoided the drought that has flattened the Colorado aspens.

Start at Bishop Creek and work north. The canyon turns first, then the June Lake Loop, then Conway Summit and the Mono Lake overlooks by the middle of the month. Drive it slowly. The best stands are a mile or two off the highway on the side roads, and you will miss them at speed.

Where to stay. French Camp, in the Rock Creek area near Tom’s Place, is midway between Bishop and Mammoth Lakes and takes up to 35 feet across its 86 sites. There are no hookups. It normally runs to the end of October, weather permitting, which in a high desert canyon is a real qualifier. The BLM campground at Crowley Lake is the closer option to town, about eleven miles from Bishop, but it recommends a 30 foot maximum, so a 27 foot trailer is close to the edge of what the sites were built for.

2. Route 100, Vermont

Go the first two weeks of October. Peak lands around the sixth most years, and the whole state turns at roughly the same time rather than in stages.

Route 100 runs about two hundred miles up the middle of Vermont, and the pleasure of it is that you are never far from a village. You can drive for an hour through the Green Mountain National Forest and still find coffee.

Where to stay. Gifford Woods State Park sits directly on Route 100 at Killington, takes up to 35 feet, and has showers, water and a dump station. It closes in the middle of October, so it is a first half of the month plan. Little River State Park near Waterbury is the larger option at 81 sites and takes up to 40 feet, with a 10 foot width limit and no hookups at all, so arrive full and charged. The last mile of the access road is dirt.

A warning worth more than the campground advice. Do not take a trailer through Smugglers Notch. Vermont law prohibits combination vehicles over 45 feet on that segment of Route 108, and a 27 foot trailer behind a tow vehicle is over that before you start. The Notch is a series of hairpins between boulders. Route 100 does not require it, so simply do not go that way.

3. Scenic Byway 12, Utah

Go the second half of October. The cottonwoods along the creek bottoms turn late, and the crowds have gone home.

The stretch that matters runs from Escalante to Torrey, including the Hogback, where the road follows a ridge with a drop on both sides. It is the most striking piece of pavement in the state and almost nobody talks about it. Stop at Calf Creek Recreation Area fifteen miles out of Escalante and walk in to the lower falls, but do not plan to sleep there. The campground is small and tight and it is not somewhere to take a trailer.

Where to stay. Kodachrome Basin State Park is the best base on this entire list. It is about half an hour from Bryce, takes rigs up to 50 feet, and has thirteen full hookup sites alongside the standard ones, with showers and flush toilets, ringed by sandstone spires. It stays open through the winter. If you are properly self sufficient there is abundant dispersed camping on Boulder Mountain, though the developed forest campgrounds up there run to single figures in site count and are not built for a trailer this size.

4. Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

Go the third week of October. Colour moves down the mountain through the month, so elevation is your dial. If you are early, drive higher. If you are late, drive lower.

Do the southern third out of Asheville. Four hundred and sixty nine miles of parkway with no trucks and no billboards is a genuinely different kind of driving, and the bottom section has the best of it.

Where to stay. Mount Pisgah is the one to book. Sites take up to 40 feet and a handful go considerably longer, there are showers and a dump station, and it runs through Sunday the twenty fifth of October this year.

Julian Price, further north, needs care. Most of its RV sites are capped between 21 and 29 feet, so a 27 foot trailer fits only a small number of them and you have to book a specific site rather than turn up. There is no first come, first served at Price this season and the shower house is closed for the year. Treat it as a fallback, not a plan.

No parkway campground has water or electrical hookups. That surprises people every single year, so arrive with full tanks.

5. The Kancamagus, New Hampshire

Go the first week of October. New Hampshire peaks alongside Vermont, and the Kanc is short enough that you can catch it on exactly the right day if you are paying attention.

Thirty four miles, no services along the whole length, and a handful of overlooks that earn the reputation. Go on a Tuesday. On an October weekend the pullouts are full by nine in the morning and you will spend the day in traffic.

Where to stay. Jigger Johnson, twelve miles west of Conway, has seventy four generous sites and is the only campground on the highway with showers, which matters more than you would think in October. The sites themselves are large and the real constraint is turning room on the campground roads rather than any posted limit. It closes in the middle of the month. Hancock, five miles east of Lincoln, takes up to 35 feet and stays open year round with reduced services, so it is the one to fall back on if you arrive late in the season.

6. The Tunnel of Trees, Michigan

Go the first half of October. This is the one most people outside the Midwest have never heard of, and it is twenty miles of closed canopy with Lake Michigan appearing through gaps in the trees.

M-119 runs north from Harbor Springs to Cross Village. Leave the trailer behind and drive it unhitched. The road is narrow, winding, and has no centre line in places. This is not a length limit so much as basic courtesy to everyone coming the other way.

Where to stay. Petoskey State Park is just south, and its Tannery Creek campground has a hundred larger sites with electrical hookups, showers and water, taking up to 35 feet. Young State Park on Lake Charlevoix, about fourteen miles southwest of Petoskey, has full hookups for rigs up to 40 feet and is the roomier of the two.

7. The Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Go late October. The gorge comes latest of anything on this list, and it comes wettest. Both of those are the point. Wet basalt and low cloud suit the place.

Drive the Historic Columbia River Highway rather than the interstate below it. It was built to be looked at, with stone parapets and a series of waterfalls within a few miles of each other.

Where to stay. Memaloose, eleven miles west of The Dalles, is the easiest of the three for a longer trailer, with sites up to 60 feet, full hookups and a dump station, open through the thirty first of October. Ainsworth State Park sits at the eastern end of the historic highway with forty five full hookup sites, a 40 foot limit and the same closing date. Viento, five miles outside Hood River, has power and hot showers but caps sites at 30 feet, so it is the tightest of the three. Full hookups are worth seeking out here. It rains.

8. Going-to-the-Sun Road, Montana

Go before the nineteenth of October, which is when the road closes for the season in a normal year. It can shut earlier if the snow arrives early, so treat the date as an outside limit rather than a plan.

This one comes with a hard constraint. Nothing longer than twenty one feet combined, or wider than eight feet, is permitted between Avalanche Creek and Rising Sun. That rules out any tow vehicle and trailer together, including ours. Vehicles over ten feet tall also struggle with the rock overhangs west of Logan Pass. Drop the trailer at the campground and drive the road in the tow vehicle alone. It is a better drive that way regardless.

Where to stay. Apgar on the west side has twenty five sites that take 40 feet, but the full campground closes on the eleventh of October, with primitive camping in the picnic area for the remainder of the month. St. Mary covers the east side, where three sites take 40 feet and another twenty two take 35. One thing to know about St. Mary this year: it is closed indefinitely to tents and soft sided campers because of bear activity, and hard sided units only are permitted. An aluminium trailer qualifies. A rooftop tent does not.

The closing calendar

The whole list, in the order it shuts.

Before you go

Three things that will save you a wasted drive.

Reserve now. Foliage season is the only time of year when these campgrounds behave like concert tickets. Vermont and the Blue Ridge in particular went months ago.

Check the closing date, not the opening date. A drive that is perfect on the fifteenth can be a locked gate on the first of November.

Know your combined length before you leave. Two of these eight have hard limits that turn a trailer into a problem, and both are easier to solve at home than at a ranger station.

A Bowlus runs several days off grid without hookups, which is what makes the no hookup nights on this list usable rather than theoretical. Little River and the whole Blue Ridge Parkway have no power or water at all, and half of these campgrounds have already shut their water off for the winter by the time the colour is good.

Wherever you end up, go in the two weeks that matter. The road will still be there in November. The colour will not.