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While the northeast and great lakes are well known for fall colors, what areas of the South do you travel to see the most vibrant fall colors and when is usually the best weeks for that?
Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina. Third or fourth week of October is usually the peak in that part of Virginia. Here in NJ patchy colors are starting to show up already so things might be a little ahead of schedule this year.
While the northeast and great lakes are well known for fall colors, what areas of the South do you travel to see the most vibrant fall colors and when is usually the best weeks for that?
Gatlinburg, TN around the 1st or 2nd week of November and sometimes a week or two before. One year, I drove to Gatlinburg the last week in October and it snowed (At higher elevations). Completely caught me off guard.
Anywhere in the southern Appalachians, basically Northern Alabama, northern Georgia, east Tennessee, Western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky and western Virginia.
The coastal plain areas are the worst since the dominant vegetation is Longleaf and Loblolly pines which don't turn, along with oaks that don't turn as pretty as they do further up north. If you want good color on the coastal plain, you really need to be from around central New Jersey northward. The piedmont south is what I call "so-so", as the color is less intense the further south you go, but piedmont Virginia and often North Carolina has some decent color, but don't expect a lot of maples like you do further north, but the dogwoods, poplars, gum, and some hickory trees have some good color there. West/Central Tennessee, north central Alabama, northern Mississippi, and parts of Kentucky are in the same category. That said, I'd rate the high mountains of TN, VA, NC, and KY as the best fall color in the south, along with central/southern West Virginia (I don't consider northern WV and the panhandles southern).
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