Three Simple Rules to Plan Your Fall Foliage Vacation
3 Simple rules to plan your fall foliage vacation
“What are the best dates for my fall foliage vacation”? I’ve been spending time in various travel forums as well as my blog’s comment areas and all reflect the same mood. People are in a panic over their itineraries and whether or not they’ve picked the right time with the right place to view fall foliage.
I’ve tried to make it clear that if you break down all the planning, you’re left with three determining factors that control your fall foliage vacation.
Three rules for determining your fall foliage vacation
- Interests
- Vacation dates
- Vacation location
These three things control where you go and what you see. By determining any one of these three items you have pretty much determined the other two.
First consider your interests
When you arrive in New England, you’re going to be drawn to what interests you. You can make a list of what your interests are. A short list , for example, might be village commons with little white churches, covered bridges, or antique stores. So this is the focus of your trip.
Choose your fall foliage vacation dates
This is usually much simpler. Your job may dictate when you can take vacation or perhaps the schedules of family and friends who are joining you. Either way, once you set the dates you will have a good idea of where you can travel and have autumn’s fall tapestry of color.
If you tell me that your vacation dates are for instance… 3 – 8 October, then I can tell you where you’ll be. (*approximate only and it depends on the year*)
In New Hampshire, you will be in the heart of the White Mountains. In Maine you will be up around Moosehead Lake down to Sebago. Over in Vermont you will be in the Northeast Kingdom south to Northfield. (Variable based on year some years are earlier and some are later)
Choose fall foliage vacation location which can also be interest driven
The inverse of choosing the dates is choosing the location. If you tell me that you want to spend a couple of days in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and then a drive over Old Sturbridge Village, along with a few days in the quiet corner of Connecticut, then you just picked your dates at the same time.
Your Dates = Locations OR Your Locations = Dates
You would start out in the Berkshires around the 8th to the 10th of October, Sturbridge Village is usually nice around the 14th or 15th of October and then you proceed into Connecticut for the rest of your trip. (OH! And again it could be early or late)
Interest driven planning
Here, you can say interest and location go hand in hand. IF! the interest only happens in one location then you merged them together. If your interest is. Covered Bridges? Then the locations of this interest stretch all over the majority of New England.
So in the above case, what do you do? Well if your dates are limited, then you go back to your dates to change the location of your interest. If the weekend of your interest is 3-5 Oct, then you will be in Northern NH and VT skipping the other states since their colors won’t be turning this early.
So by choosing any one item (dates, location, interests) you’ve narrowed down the focus of your vacation planning.
Jeff Foliage Folger
Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage
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Jeff, thank you for your commentary. We’re planning our first fall foliage trip for this fall, and we’re quite intimidated by all the information out there. You’ve whittled it down into practical plans. We’re really looking forward to it.
Dave, I would say looking at this page on my site you can choose a state and see article based on that state… I “think” it will be helpful.