South Shore Leaf Peeping

As fall foliage season peaks, we hit the South Shore again to see what was what....

There are disadvantages to working this turf. In a county where the tallest place is Manomet, we're not going to get those panoramic mountain valley shots where you can see 10,000 trees. Sorry 'bout that. I tend to aim at one tree, often- as you can see above- one that is in someone's yard. If you're upset about the lack of sweeping ROY G BIV vistas, take some comfort at the fact that A) many of these pictures are taken while the person inside the house is loading a shotgun nd saying, perhaps to no one but themselves, "I'll find out why thaat stony looking dude is parked in front of my house," and B) my number is going to come up at the deli some day, perhaps even some day soon. I worry not about stuff like that... "The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast."

Whoever owns this house can do a fall foliage drive just by idling their car in the driveway. Added bonus: basketball hoop. Nothing says "suburban white kid" like one of those not-planted-in-concrete basketball hoops. Ally McBeal could tear down that backboard if she dunked on it. Imagine if Shaq threw down on that? He might snatch it up by the pole after and beat you with it, just for not having the planted-in-concrete type of basketball hoop. Your author here is a tall man, and he sometimes wastes a tangent on stuff that only 6'5"+ people care about.

Orange is the essential fall foliage color. Red and yellow can be found in spring or summer, in the form of roses, glads, marigolds, what have you... but you're not getting orange until Autumn. With the prominent place in Autumn/Halloween ascribed to the pumpkin, orange sort of wins in a rout.  

Since you asked, our road trip this time went 1) Bourne, 2) Plymouth, 3) Kingston, 4) Duxbury, 5) Marshfield, 6) Pembroke, 7) Norwell, 8) Hanover, 9) Rockland, 10) Hingham, back to 11) Bourne.

The good Lord works in many a strange and wondrous way, and even a non-drinker knows better than to cross the Great Spirit when He pretty much smacks you in the face with a suggestion. A pre-noon Mudslide or two never hurt anyone.

Not a lot of people know this.... but when you're drinking and driving, the way to keep safe is to introduce a second negative integer into the equation. Shooting a camera while driving counts as a negative. Two negatives will, uhm, negate the negative charge of each other into a positive. The mathematics work

You know that the green trees are all jealous...

"Foliage and fenced-in meadows" go together like "F5 Tornado and trailer park."

This tree, normally yellow, wore pink in October to raise awareness for breast cancer.

This tree cares not for the affairs of wood-burning humans.

I got the house level in this shot, but the street was, like, on  hill or something.

Lake shots are as close as n EMass shutterbug can get to Vermont-style views. My camera and skills hold me back personally, but I didn't see any overly colorful horizon foliage.

Ignore the times and dates on the shots, my camera changes the time/date every time I turn it on and off. I took these last Friday or so. I did the South Coast on Saturday. The Cape is coming soon.

Not many places have less foliage than sand/scrub/pine-dominated  Duxbury Beach. I had to jump a fence and stomp on some beach grass to get this color.

The one below came easier:

Check back for South Coast and Cape Cod!

Early Season Leaf Peeping In Plymouth County

It's about two weeks too early, but we took to the streets to see what sort of early fall foliage we could find in Plymouth County.

Southeastern Massachusetts may be the weakest spot in New England for leaf peeping, but New England has the bar set pretty high.

One of the benefits of having a blurry camera is that, if you don't enjoy fall foliage, you can just squint at this picture and pretend that the article is about forest fires.

As you can see, we'll be working in the ROY part of the ROY G BIV color spectrum. I looked pretty hard for a purple tree without success. I may have seen a Magenta tree, I'm not sure.... never had that crayon.

Our basic route for this trip was Bourne to Wareham to Plymouth to Kingston to Plympton to Halifax to Bridgewater to Hanson to Pembroke to Duxbury back to Bourne.

I went down Route 106 after a huge yellow tree in Plympton, but it hadn't peaked yet. This tree in Halifax was up earlier.

I needed orange in my life badly enough to shoot the tree with wires in front of it.

Otherwise, a shutterbug develops  tendency to invite themselves into people's yards without permission to seek better shots. I haven't been beaten up or shot at yet, but it's only a matter of time. I have already forgiven my future assailant.

Fortunately, one of the benefits of  working with a crappy camera is that shooting out the window of a car going 50 MPH doesn't really lower the quality that much when compared to my stand-still work.

Neither of my MVP trees (the giant yellow one in Plympton and a deep red one next to the Middleboro 4H building) were at peak when I drove by.

I should really learn which types of tree are birch, cedar, maple, forsythia etc.... I only know maple leafs because they have a hockey team.

I shoot 100 pics or so, then go through them at the end of the trip. Memory issues come up, and you get captions like "I think this is Kingston."

No foliage here, but I love reflective work.

Don't let the week-old dates deter you on the pictures from Leaf Peeping. My camera calendar is  week slow.

Pine dominates our tree shots, preventing us (along with my camera) from getting those panoramic Vermont calendar shots.

Be sure to tune back in....

Because we'll be doing more of the South Shore....

And we'll also do the South Coast...

As well as Cape Cod!

I'll even drag Jessica along, as she takes better pictures than I do.

See you on the road!

Opening Day Blues: The Peril Of Driving In The First Snow Of The Season

We have had a couple of minor winter weather events recently, officially kicking off the Snow season. With this snowfall came a slew of fender-bending fun. Monday's evening commute was a doozy on the South Shore, as ocean-effect snow came down hard.

This snow was the catalyst behind dozens of car crashes. If you surfed Facebook on Monday afternoon, you saw the horror stories coming in.

"Kingston to Green Harbor, 60 minutes."

"Tried getting off the highway onto Route 53.... bad idea. Parking lot."

"Four concurrent accidents between Exit 11 and Exit 10 in Duxbury."

"Route 44: 10 Miles, 45 Minutes."

We wrote yesterday about how Southerners have difficulties driving in snow. A warm city like Atlanta can be shoved into zombie-apocalypse chaos by 2 inches of snow. For one day every year, so can Massachusetts.

While it snowed for a good, long time yesterday, in the end, we only got 2-4". That's nothing. Last year, we were getting 2-4 inches an hour for about 6 weeks. While I don't have the numbers for Massachusetts handy, I'd bet that it took 20 inches of February snow to get the highway anarchy that we had Monday night with our 2 inches.

I did poke around those Internets to see if I could find anything official-looking to validate my suspicions. An article from a 2004 Pennsylvania newspaper cites a study of 1.4 million fatal accidents showed that a substantially larger percentage of fatal accidents went down on the first day of snowfall in a season.

First snowfalls are especially deadly for elderly drivers, who seem to be mixing "difficulties adjusting to winter conditions" with "this was the event where Grammy really began to show her age" and adding a touch of "Grandpa needs to upgrade from his 1976 Coupe De Ville."

A more recent article concerning an Iowa State Patrol study showed that in 2014, there were 700 accidents in November. Most of these were attributed to snowfall. In December, which in theory is deeper in the winter and subsequently snowier, the number of accidents drops to 359.

Wisconsin, which is snowier than Massachusetts, agrees with my theory enough that at least one newspaper there titled an article "People Need To Re-Learn How To Drive."

Its the same set of mistakes in any snowy community. People drive too fast, they ride the other car's bumper, and they respond poorly to snow-related hazards. In non-wintry communities, you can add "lack of snow-removal equipment" to the mix.

People who get year-after-year snow have a tendency to adjust as the winter sets in, which the Iowa study shows. They ease up on the gas pedal, they avoid dangerous or busy roads, they remember to leave earlier, they get snow tires, and they perform a zillion other calibrations to their driving style.

We are actually at a high point in snow-driving proficiency among people in Southeastern Massachusetts. Last winter was one of our worst ever. Many towns shattered their winter snowfall record totals. You may live a long time before you see a winter like that one.

This means that almost every driver on the local roads, with the exception of snowbirds and kids who just got their license this year, has some experience driving in the worst winter conditions that Massachusetts can dish out. Teenagers right now have the same Worst Winter Ever perspective as a 70 year old man. That should make for a lengthy period of slightly better local driving.

Except during the first snowfall, of course. We all fall to pieces then.