Our national park system is gorgeous year round, but some park units are made for fall, thanks to their abundance of hardwood forests. The annual changing of the leaves is like nature’s version of performance art as those hardwoods put on a dazzling show of color before winter sets in. The fact that the performance is fleeting is one of the reasons it’s so spectacular. Summer is gone and winter is coming, but for a brief window in September and October, we get to experience the outdoors with near-perfect temperatures, reduced crowds, and a forest canopy that is ablaze with color.
Here are the top national parks for witnessing mother nature’s last gasp before winter takes hold—and the best fall adventures in each park.
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Shenandoah National Park might be the perfect fall foliage destination. The mountains are covered with hardwood forests, while drastic elevation changes within the park extend the window for finding color from mid September to mid November. The 200,000-acre park is covered with beech, birch and hickory trees that turn yellow, while black gums and maples offer shades of red. And it’s not just the hardwoods that perform during the fall; Virginia Creeper, a vine that covers most of the rock walls inside the park, turns a reddish purple in September. A two-lane road cruises through the heart of the park for 100 miles, giving you fast access to long range views with every overlook. It’s also a great park for late fall adventures, as the season finishes with giant poplars that occupy the stream valleys, and turn yellow in the middle of November.
The Adventure: Hike Upper Hawksbill Trail
Half the fun of visiting Shenandoah is cruising Skyline Drive, a 100-mile two lane road that follows the crest of the mountains through the heart of the park. Overlooks that give broad views of the peaks beyond and the valleys below are situated at regular intervals, so you’ll have plenty of reasons to stop and nab a photo or two. Shenandoah is a hiker’s park, and dozens of trails begin and end on Skyline Drive. There’s no bad hike when it comes to foliage views, but I like the perch on top of Hawksbill Summit, the tallest mountain in the park with a 360-degree view that encompasses the Shenandoah Valley below, Blue Ridge Mountains to the west, and the Piedmont to the east. Start at Upper Hawksbill Trail at milepost 46.5 on Skyline Drive and tackle the 1-mile climb to the top of the 4,049-foot peak.
Where to Stay: Fall weekends are busy and campgrounds and lodges inside the park are booked well in advance, but Lewis Mountain Campground has 30 first come/first serve sites that remain open until December 1. It’s tough to get these sites on a weekend, but if you show up on Thursday, you have a good shot at scoring one ($30 a night).
Acadia National Park, Maine
Acadia National Park is best known for its rugged coastline, where the Atlantic meets the rocky edge of Maine. But when the weather turns crisp, visitors should turn their attention to the interior of the park, where New England hardwoods like oak, maple, and beech offer punches of color to the evergreen forest. According to the National Park Service, mid October is typically peak color inside the park. You can check the state of Maine’s foliage report for weekly updates so you don’t miss the show.
The Adventure: Bike the Carriage Roads
Acadia manages 45 miles of historic carriage roads, which were built in the early 1900s by landowner John D. Rockefeller Jr. on Mount Desert Island. The roads traverse the forest on the interior of the island, crossing streams via 17 stone bridges. The crushed-stone roads aren’t open to vehicles, so you can enjoy a car-free ride as you pedal through history. Target the Tri-Lakes Loop, an 11-mile romp through the heart of Mount Desert that skirts the edges of Eagle Lake, Bubble Lake, and Jordan Lake. The grades are casual and the climbing is minimal, so you can knock it out quickly if you’re in a hurry, but you’ll also have the chance to extend your ride into a full day adventure if you’d like.
Where to Stay: Blackwoods Campground, on the interior side of Mount Desert Island, has wooded sites and is open until October 20 this year. Tent sites are $30 a night. I found open sites throughout September and October, but if you can’t score the nights you’re looking for, the gateway town of Bar Harbor has plenty of camping resorts and hotels.
Gauley River National Recreation Area, West Virginia
The Gauley River National Recreation Area is situated less than an hour from New River National Park, but gets a fraction of the attention. To be fair, the national recreation area protects a rugged gorge without much visitor infrastructure, but what it lacks in visitor centers, it makes up for in beauty. The recreation area is particularly stunning in the fall, when its 25-mile long gorge—which is blanketed by a hardwood forest—is ablaze with color.
The Adventure: Whitewater Rafting
For seven weekends in September and October, recreational releases fill the Gauley, turning a 25-mile stretch of the river through the National Recreation Area into a torrent of high-volume whitewater. Pairing that rare adventure opportunity with the annual kaleidoscope of colors that paint the wall of the Gauley’s gorge, is an absolutely transcendent adventure known as “Gauley Season.” The river drops 668 feet over 25 miles and is known for its big volume waves and drops. It’s divided into two sections, the Upper Gauley being the most intense (rafters have to have some whitewater experience and be at least 16 years old), while the Lower Gauley is a slightly more tame (12 miles of class III-V open to all boaters 12 and up). The ultimate move is to combine the two sections of the Gauley with an overnight camping trip in the middle (all inclusive from $459 per person).
If you want to experience the Gauley River without the thrill of whitewater, show up any day outside of the release days and bring your fly rod. The Gauley is loaded with trout, smallmouth bass, and walleye, all of which are feeding heavily during the fall.
Where to Stay: Try to score a spot at the Gauley Tailwaters Campground, situated below Summersville Dam. There are only 18 drive in sites, and you’d be pitching a tent in the grass, but it’s as close as you can get to the Upper Gauley put in. (And it’s free!) If you’re looking for something a little more refined, Adventures on the Gorge has cabins and campsites on an expansive campus 30 minutes from the Gauley (from $39 a night).
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Aspens and cottonwoods: that’s what you come to Rocky Mountain National Park to see in the fall. Oh, and the elk, which are busy sparring and bugling as part of their annual mating ritual. Because of the high elevation of the park, the changes to the leaves begin to happen in the middle of September as the aspens and other hardwoods turn gold, yellow, and red. October can be the sweet spot with color still lingering in the lower elevations and crowds thinning all over the park.
The Adventure: Hike Fern Lake Trail
Fern Lake Trail is a 9-mile roundtrip along the Big Thompson River, passing the 60-foot Fern Falls along the way. At the lake, you can see several 11,000 and 12,000-foot peaks on the horizon, including the 12,331-foot Knobtop Mountain. The majority of the trail is forested, so you’ll be treated with a canopy full of cottonwoods, aspens, and willows turning different shades of yellow and orange throughout fall.
For elk viewing, head to the meadows in Upper Beaver Meadows or Moraine Park, where elk are known to gather around dawn and dusk. But stick to the roads and established trails—the meadows are closed to foot traffic during September and October to protect the annual rut. The Kawuneeche Valley, on the west side of the park near Grand Lake, is a great place to see aspens and elk at the same time. The 7-mile Green Mountain Loop passes through forests of lodgepole and quaking aspen as well as the Big Meadow, which draws elk in the morning and late afternoon.
Where to Stay: Camping inside the park gets scarce come fall. Longs Peak Campground and Glacier Basin Campground are both closed for 2025, and Moraine Park Campground and Aspen Glen Campground both close for the season at the end of September. Timber Creek Campground is open until October 6 this year, though. It’s a quieter campground on the west side of the park near Grand Lake with 30 tent-only sites, but you’ll need reservations ($35 a night). Grand Lake Lodge has historic cabins on the edge of the park if you want a roof over your head as the temperature drops (from $137).
The Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee
The Natchez Trace is 444 miles of rolling scenic road through the heart of the South that follows the original trading route established by Native Americans and later adopted by European settlers. It’s particularly stunning in the fall as the hardwood canopy forms a tunnel of color surrounding the sinuous blacktop.
The Adventure: Bike the Natchez Trace
Technically, the road was built for vehicles, and a thru-drive beginning in Nashville, Tennessee and ending at the Mississippi River is certainly a worthy endeavor. But the Natchez Trace also offers a primo opportunity to pedal through that same gorgeous landscape, and the Parkway operates bicycle-only campgrounds and bicycle service stations throughout its corridor. Riding the entire road takes at least a week. The Adventure Cycling Association guides regular trips (from $2499 per person). If you want to tackle a piece of the Parkway, check out the northernmost 60 miles, where you can use Nashville as your basecamp and pedal the hilliest portion of the road past waterfalls and overlooks as you cruise through a deciduous hardwood forest.
Where to Stay: Nashville is loaded with hotel options, and there are two campgrounds within the northernmost stretch of the Parkway. The Tennessee Highway 50 Campground is bicycle only at milepost 408, but the Meriiwether Lewis Campground, at milepost 385, is more scenic as it’s tucked into the forest. Both are first-come first-served and free.
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park put on one of the best displays of fall color in the west. The forest surrounding the iconic craggy peaks of the park are scattered with aspens, cottonwoods, and willows, all of which turn different shades of yellow in September and October. You’ll also find splashes of red from the black hawthorn shrubs that grow along streams and wetlands. But the colorful landscape is just part of the show; the park’s wildlife is the most active during this season so it’s a good time to see pronghorn sheep gathering before migrating south for the winter and elk bugling and sparring in the meadows.
The Adventure: The Fall Safari
You’re going to see color if you hit Grand Teton in late September and October—the aspens and cottonwoods are hard to miss. But put in a little effort and you can increase your chances of seeing some spectacular wildlife, too. You can take your chances on your own and head to easy to reach spots like Oxbow Bend, a slow moving section of the Snake River where elk and moose are known to frequent. Or explore the park on a guided tour with naturalists who know exactly where to go to see the big game, and have the best equipment, like binoculars and spotting scopes, that will allow you to see these animals at a safe distance. Jackson Hole Safaris offers half day tours through October (from $170 per person).
Where to Stay: If you want to camp inside the park, Signal Mountain Campground, which has 81 sites near Jackson Lake, is open until October 14. ($55 per night). If you want to stay in town, the Virginian Lodge is a renovated motel with a variety of accommodations, from RV spaces to bunk rooms to suites (RV sites start at $139 a night; rooms start at $344).
Glacier National Park, Montana
Winter comes early to Glacier National Park, but the hardwoods that are peppered throughout the park’s evergreen forests put on one last show in September and October before the snow begins to fall in earnest. Glacier is a particularly good spot to see larch trees, which are common in the western side of the park, and turn gold in the middle of October. Maybe the best part of visiting Glacier in the fall? The crowds have thinned, so you don’t have to worry about timed entries or angling for a parking spot. And while many of the park’s facilities shut down for winter at the end of September, Going-to-the-Sun Road is typically open until the third week of October.
The Adventure: Float the Flathead River
The North Fork of the Flathead River forms the southwestern border of Glacier, and is a fun, family-friendly whitewater rafting experience during the summer months when snowmelt creates bigger rapids. But by fall, the water level has dropped and the river has mellowed, making for a relaxing float where you can take in the fall splendor without worrying about taking an unexpected swim. Glacier Guides runs full-day float trips through September on a remote section of the North Fork that’s surrounded by hardwoods exhaling their last gasp of color (from $152 per person).
The North Fork is also a world-renowned fly fishing destination, famous for its fiesta cutthroat trout. Glacier Anglers runs half day float trips where you’ll stay dry and cast from the boat with Glacier’s peaks as the backdrop (from $550 for two).
Where to Stay: A lot of the park’s facilities shut down at the end of September, but Bowman Lake Campground operates primitive camping until November 1, unless the snow falls heavy and early. It’s a remote campground at the end of a long, dirt road drive with 48 sites tucked into the trees near Bowman Lake. Sites are first come/first serve. ($15 per night).
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee
You can’t talk about national parks and fall foliage without mentioning Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). This 500,000-acre preserve protects one of the most biodiverse forests in the world—a forest that is made up predominantly of hardwoods that turn every shade of the rainbow in fall. The show begins at the end of September at the higher elevations of the park and carries on through the beginning of November in the lower valleys.
The Adventure: Backpack to Big Trees
GSMNP is crowded most weekends throughout the year, but it reaches another level of activity during peak leaf peeping. Fortunately, most of those people stick to the same spots—Cades Cove, Newfound Gap Road, Kuwohi—so it’s easy to find solitude, especially if you’re willing to put in some leg work. Hike the 14-mile Cataloochee Divide Loop and you’ll bag the trifecta of fall splendor inside the park: expansive mountaintop views, the chance to see elk, and massive old growth forests. The backpack combines Hemphill Bald Trail, Caldwell Fork Trail, and Rough Fork Trail trail on the eastern border of the park, far away from the crowds at Gatlinburg, and crosses over Hemphill Bald, a 5,000-foot grassy mountaintop, before dropping deep into the forest where a stand of massive old growth poplars can be found. Elk also frequent the area, so keep an eye out in the morning and before sunset. You can tackle this loop as a full day hike, but it’s best as an overnight trip, which will give you time to cast for trout in Caldwell Fork, a narrow backcountry stream near that forest of poplars.
Where to Stay: The best backcountry campsite on this loop is closed because of damage from Hurricane Helene, but you can pitch your tent at the next best site, backcountry campsite 40, Big Hemlock, at mile 10 of the loop, and still be a quick stroll to Caldwell Fork for fishing. Get a backcountry permit for the campsite ($8) in advance.
Graham Averill is Outside magazine’s national parks columnist. He believes that fall is one of nature’s greatest magic shows, especially in the Southern Appalachians where he lives. He recently wrote about the most picture-perfect spots in Yosemite National Park.
The post The Best National Parks for Fall Foliage Adventures appeared first on Outside Online.
