A lot of people think that the South Coast isn't a Player when fall foliage in New England is discussed. You may be one of them... and don't try lying to me, because I can see you. Stop looking at me like that!
I'm here to tell you that the South Coast represents hard every Autumn. You may have to wait longer than you would with Vermont, and you may not have any mountain vistas like New Hampshire does... but you can have a nice foliage drive if you keep your expectations realistic.
Like any Natural Beauty scenarios, it's best if you get out of the cities and into the sticks. This is pure Tree Math, folks... cities tend to not have a lot of trees. We'll discuss that a few pictures down from this one, but know that I love and respect New Bedford and Fall River. One of my favorite views in Massachusetts is when you're heading west on 195, you round the corner, and New Beddy is laid out before you. It's just not my favorite view when I'm writing Fall Foliage articles.
When whoever that guy in the Veteran grave there was earning his resting place the hard way back in 1863 or so, there was almost no chance of him knowing that- one day- his grave would end up in a look-at-that-rain-falling picture on an obscure regional website written by a stoner with a bad camera. It'd be like going back 100000 years and having a caveman say "Take the Patriots and the Over." I don't know what the people of 1863 did for fun, but I bet it didn't involve driving around taking Foliage pictures. The Internet must have sucked in the Civil War.
I would have 100% stopped to pick blueberries if they were open... I get pulled over by the police a lot, and it'd be fun to see the cop get to my car window and be confronted by a friendly photographer with dyed-blue lips/teeth/cheeks/fingers. "Uhmmmm.... you're all set, guy... the town line is over there, why don't you go cross it?"
Weather was all over this article. I went out during a tropical rainstorm (I think it was when Tropical Storm Nicole was getting sucked up into a trough and all of her rain hit us last Saturday), which isn't the best time to shoot pics of tree leaves... but it was when I had the free time to do so. The rain also kept people off of the roads, which makes things easier for me. The preceding drought did me no favors, as droughts tend to hurry up the peak of the season. I'll discuss that whenever the Middleboro 4H picture comes up. It also kept me from getting out of the car for pictures, like it did here in New Bedford. Nice tree, though... especially for a city.
Fall River has trees with foliage, too... but, being Fall River, that tree appears to be incarcerated. Note that I am applying the Apocalypse Now method to my driving-in-a-car-style photography... "Never get out of the boat." My photography is better if I'm not soaked.
I got out of the car for the Mattapoisett River shot. Mattapoisett is where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts went down, but I was safe this far up the river... especially because I was standing on Route 6 and shooting down from a little country-road bridge.
Not the best shot in the world, but the article needed some Red. I was impressed that I managed to crop the bank out of the picture in a snap-shot while I was driving.
Power lines are also the bane of the in-the-car photographer. This was another shot out the window, one where I failed to crop the power lines out. You can also sort of see the sun, so I can only blame laziness.
The basic route was out of Bourne, through Wareham into Marion, and then up Route 105 until I was more Plymouth County than South Coast. Think I'm lying? There's the 105 sign... and you can't fake that.
I hooked down Route 79, cut through the Freetown State Forest (I drove into the 4WD part in a Dodge Stratus standing about 3 inches off the ground, passed a man in a truck with huge tires leaving that area, and briefly saw him just smiling at the about-to-get-stuck Dummy... fortunately, I grew up on a beach with 4WD-only areas, recognized his Look, and banged a U). I then made it to Route 6, and have this photo as proof. I took 6 back into Buzzards Bay.
I think this shot is from a South Shore article, and may actually be southern Pymouth. See for yourself in this South Shore foliage article, or maybe in this Early Season South Shore article. We may also do a Cape Cod foliage article, they haven't peaked yet. Ignore the dates on these pictures, my camera is funny. These pictures are from about 8 days ago. Sorry, I was busy.
The South Coast was heavy on the Orange and Yellow. I had trouble finding Red, and came to regret passing on some Wareham/Marion red foliage while being overconfident that I would find more in my travels.
This tree is a certified MVP candidate. It's a shame that I drove up on it during a Biblical downpour. Look, even the leaves fell off of it in a cool manner! I pulled off the road and blocked a side street to get this pic, and the tree was so lovely that the guy who I didn't realize I was blocking drove around me, rolled down his window and- instead of cursing me- said "She's a beauty, huh?" I think it was in Freetown... if you think otherwise, let me know. You most likely know better than I remember.
Marion, home to both this picture and the first picture in this article, was laid out by someone who was into fall foliage. Every street has a Fall Foliage canopy. I detoured into Marion because a girl at the Trowbridge Tavern heard I was shooting foliage and said "You should go into Marion, the stuff is hanging over every street." Marion, Middleboro and Halifax easily could support their own articles if I decided to go By Town instead of By Region
This one is from the Freetown State Forest, an undisputed corner of the spooky-as-f*ck Bridgewater Triangle. This was just before I ran into the 4WD guy smirking at Trish, my Dodge Stratus. If I had snapped a picture of his smirk, he'd be in a million "So, you're really about to do that?" Internet memes by this time next year. He'd be like that Willie Wonka meme pic, or the one with Kermit the Frog drinking his tea.
Gotta love this tree... it's like Paul Bunyan or Shaq took up Bonsai as a hobby.
The non-orange trees nearby are very jealous of this bright orange one that gets all of the media attention. They should stop hatin' and try to foliage harder or something.
One of the supposed benefits of living in a city is that you don't need to buy a rake... and then this happens.
I was all psyched as I pulled up on this bright red tree, which hs been the MVP of previous foliage articles. The sun even came out. However, Massachusetts had a bad drought all summer, and droughts do to foliage season what smoking does to smoker life spans... sort of shaves X amout of days off of it. I missed this tree's peak by a short enough time span that the leaves under it hadn't blown away yet. To make things worse, some carpenter was parked in front of the building!
Working in some more red here, although there's a small chance that this might be Duxbury. I do a lot of driving, I take a lot of pictures, and misunderstandings occur.
I'm pretty sure that this is Acushnet, and is that not one spooky-looking motheruffing tree? It looks like it was used to hang witches. The homeowners- who I like already, for both the tree and the stone wall in the foreground- should have gone All In and had some Amityville Horror attic eye-windows installed. I honestly don't know if I would trick-or-treat that house.
While lacking red (red leaves may fall off earlier, I don't know), the South Coast has plenty of Orange, which is the main Autumn color anyhow.
I could have gone into the guy's yard to get a shot without the power lines, but I'm already imposing myself on him by aiming a camera into his yard. While I'm not even 5% tough, I'm not a small man, and most non-tough people would want to have a gun when confronting me... which is No Problemo on the ol' South Coast, especially in the sticks. The homeowner deserves his/her privacy, and a guy shooting pictures of Pretty Trees doesn't deserve to catch a slug... so I just snap pics out of the car window, thank you.
I think this is just me zooming in on the same foliage from the Southern Plymouth shot, but if you've read this far... why not have some more foliage?
Here is me having some Level Horizon problems that hack photographers encounter as they learn their craft... but dude has a stockade fence, a stone wall, a foliage tree and Ol' Glory, so he's in this article, hater. He's in there like swimwear. OK, it looks like the tree has a pet house, but my man made up for that with some pure Stone Wall Patriotism.
As we have pointed out in our South Shore foliage articles, the South Coast doesn't really have any moutains that I can get those Vermont-style calendar shots from. This is Sea Level foliage, player. We're doing the best that we can for you.
This tree rocks a nice Jamaica-flag style green/yellow mix, and we'll throw it in the article.
This is either Carver or Plymouth, out in the Myles Standish State Forest area. The MSSF was a little weak for foliage, as Pine dominated. Lovely ride, though... the kind of road where you see a man walking down the street with a shotgun, and you just sort of nod hello to him. I decided not to snap a picture of him, sorry...
This is one of my Chill Spots, aka Little Sandy Pond in Southern Plymouth. Although I left my house to do this article, the true starting point was here.
I ascribe my "Never get out of the boat" theory especially hard around cemeteries. I didn't even stop the boat, let alone get out of it. I try not to f*ck around anywhere near Bridgewater Triangle cemeteries.
I had to go length-wise to get this tree.
Here's another house I won't be trick-or-treating at. Frodo Baggins might answer the door wearing the One Ring. This looks like the Shire, but it's actually Dartmouth, and the spookiness is lowered by the proximity to the Mall. You can never get too scared by a haunted house when you know that you can be at the Chuck E. Cheese in a good five minute panic run.
I'll tolerate some Blurry if it gets me some more Red, and I hope you will too.
Let's not resent a little Green as the main course for a picture in the foliage article.
I like that someone clustered these trees, you see a cool burst of color as you speed by in the Trish Stratus. I was working with poor light, but it was a nice bunch of trees, trust me.
I was gonna ask the guy if he would move his beater car out of the way so I could get me some Big Leaf/Barn House action, but that laooks like the house of a man who owns a shotgun. It adds character, I suppose...
While Jessica and I are finishing up work on the South Coast Compound of our media empire, we thought that we would take to the countryside and see what we could do for you all...
This article could have had several titles. I've erased several of them myself, and Jessica vetoed one. Among those titles that we considered and discarded for one reason or another were:
"Where To Hide A Body In Eastern Massachusetts" "Where To Have A Sasquatch Run In Front Of Your Car" "Where To Teach Your Clumsy Daughter How To Drive" "Where To Smoke A Joint And Drive 27 MPH With No One Behind You" "Where To Illegally Dump Your Washing Machine" "Where Old People Who Just Now Bought The '57 Chevy That They Always Wanted Go To Drive With Elvis Playing And Not Have Modern Kids Laugh At Them" "Where UFOs Look To Scare Isolated Individuals Whom No One Will Believe" "Where To Stumble Onto A Satanic Ritual" "Where To Bet Your Car's Pink Slip On A Drag Race" "Where To Introduce The 'Put Out Or Get Out' Dating Quandary" "Where To Be Mistaken For A Deer And Shot By A Hunter" "Where To Go If You Feel Like Driving But May Have A Warrant Out For Your Arrest"
Among the contributors to this website... Stacey, who is a soccer mom, came up with "stashing a body," "Satanic ritual" and the date rape joke. Her daughter, who is in her teens, came up with the Elvis joke. Non-hunting Stephen came up with the hunting joke. Abdullah, who has no kids, came up with the Clumsy Teen Driver joke. Stephen had Stacey's "Where To Stash A Body" joke as a working title for this article before Jessica intervened.
A nice, isolated stretch of road is a wonderful thing, and it gets more and more rare every passing day. In other parts of the world and even in other parts of Massachusetts, a lonely run of street isn't a rare thing. Eastern Massachusetts isn't other parts of the world, however.
As my friend Beth once noted after leaving New Jersey, "You forget how accustomed you can be to white trash, overpopulation and air pollution."
As people diffuse throughout America, these empty spaces will become harder and harder to find. Our elderly residents can no doubt recall when somewhere with a busy mall used to be a back road to nowhere.
We all have our own reasons for seeking an isolated road to drive on. We listed some up above, you may have other reasons, and no one is here to judge you. We're just here to guide you to some cool places to drive.
We'll use some of those aborted titles as logic for including certain streets in the list, and we will also try to point out where certain practices might prove impractical. We try to be inclusive to anyone who might stumble onto our humble web page, even chronic litterers and serial killers.
So, without any further ado, we give to you but a small sample of some places you can go in our area to have the road all to yourself.
courtesy of Sara Flynn
Gurnet Road/King Arthur Road, Duxbury
I use the dual designation here because, even after growing up there for 30 years, I'm not 100% sure where Gurnet Road ends and King Arthur Road begins. Google Maps says KAR juts out just a few hundred yards from Saquish. Other people, maybe more for convenience than for authenticity, use the Powder Point Bridge as the dividing line between the two roads.
Gurnet Road implies the residential section of Duxbury Beach, while King Arthur Road would be very handy for describing the road south of the bridge. However, I'm fairly sure that it is Gurnet Road right up until you get to the actual Gurnet, at which point it gets named after the silly English king.
The differences are minimal, however. What you have here is about 5 miles of sand road, as bumpy as a golf ball, and probably the best coastal scenery in non-Cape Massachusetts. 4WD only, at least once you get to the bridge.
You can very easily pull over on this road somewhere and, if you see no approaching headlights, be pretty sure that the closest person to you would have to swim across Duxbury Bay to say "hello."
Bournedale Road, Bourne
There is no truth to the story that "Bournedale" is an Algonquian word for "Shortcut." That may have been made up by a Bournedale-area website content generator guy.
Other than a few dozen houses, Bournedale Road is uninhabited. It's little more than some gorgeous scenery, and a way for Buzzards Bay and Wareham residents to get home from Route 3 without messing around on the Scenic Highway.
This road can be fairly busy at certain times of day, but you can have it to yourself if you pick your spots.
This is a terrible road to train a teen driver on. It winds a lot, has numerous high-angle descending S curves and is lined with sofa-sized boulders right at the road's edge. It isn't a very challenging road, but it is very unforgiving.
Added bonus: The Buzzards Bay end of it has a farm stand and a horse farm.
West Wind Shores, Plymouth
Not a lot of people know about this area, as there is really no reason for anyone to use it. "If you ain't from here, you don't come here" applies to this tiny Plymouth village.
Essentially all of Plymouth 1) west of Cedarville, 2 ) south of The Ponds Of Plymouth, 3) east of Wareham and 4) north of the village of Buzzards Bay, it's a unique spot on a political map. You can fire a gun from certain spots in the area and have it be heard in 4 towns, 3 regions and 2 counties.
West Wind Shores is fed by what is either Bourne or Plymouth Road, depending on what town you're in. There are some side roads which veer off into extreme southern Plymouth's lake region.
Where the mentioned-earlier Bournedale Road is a shortcut which Wareham and Buzzards Bay people use to skip the main road traffic when coming and going from Route 3, West Wind Shores is what they use when traffic is bad enough to snarl up Bournedale Road.
If you're reading this to find a place to illegally dump a sofa, this is a bad spot. The road, perhaps owing to her shortcut status, is busier than it should be.
However, once you got the sofa off the road and into the woods a few dozen yards, even God might have trouble finding you.
Just be careful that the locals don't see you... you can get a smack for that.
Glen Charlie Road/Agawam Road, Wareham
It is somewhat interesting to note that of the first four or five roads we mentioned, only Duxbury's contribution is not in a fairly linear run of roads, separated by mere meters of forest.
West Wind Shores, Bournedale Road, the College Pond Roads and Agawam Road are really only kept apart by there being no real need for a shortcut from an isolated Plymouth lakes village to an isolated Wareham one. They wouldn't be isolated if they cut out a road to them, right?
Some people, myself included, even pay to be isolated.
The Myles Standish State Forest and her adjoining regions provide a great portion of the areas we'll explore in this article. It's the Swamp Yankee hinterlands.
Glen Charlie Road, while sticking out into the middle of nowhere, isn't that isolated. If you really need to pour some lime on a former human, you want to veer off onto Agawam Road.
I have no idea who Glen Charlie is/was. I know the road is named after Glen Charlie Pond, which used to just be called Glen Pond. If you know, hit us up in the comments.
Lower/Upper College Pond Road, Carver/Plymouth
That's actually Barrett Pond, not one of the College Ponds. It's off one of the College Pond Roads, so it's good enough.
These roads punch into the Myles Standish State Forest, and you can pretty much go from Carver to the Pinehills on them.
This one is the #1 seed if we break this down to brackets. It is one of or perhaps the only road that goes through the seasonally uninhabited MSSF region. The MSSF makes neighboring towns like Plympton or Freetown look like the lights of Paris.
There are probably some serial killers in the region who have buried two or three generations of victims in this area.
This is as much road as you can have to yourself in Eastern Massachusetts, to my knowledge. It would be awesome for a very brief and hotly-contested NASCAR race. I might have to make some calls.
Old Indian Trail, Marion
This road isn't that long, but it does have the look that we were seeking. I was creeped out driving down it, and it was 2 in the afternoon. There was definitely a chance of Yeti Attack on this street.
There is no Young Indian Trail in Marion, or anywhere that I'm aware of. That might be in regular India.
This was our bumpiest road, and you wouldn't want to try it with an open beer or mixed drink. It's not the road to try in a Dodge Stratus. There were a few potholes on this road in which, if it rained, you could float a battleship around. If your girl isn't having any nonsense and you both know it, this road will at least bounce her around a bit. You gotta take what you can get sometimes, player.
Fortunately, we only needed to go 20 yards from the last house on the street to get the shot above. We went deeper, but that shot did the trick.
Quanapoag Road, Freetown/ Braley Hill Road, Lakeville
There's actually a road or two between Q Road and Braley Hill Road, but the differences will only matter to locals.
This is actually a very nice drive through some beautiful Lakes country. If you're here looking for nice country drives as opposed to somewhere to get rid of a refrigerator, you can do a lot worse. I intend to return with a camera next October, during foliage season.
After researching this project- which for some time had the title Where To Bury A Body In Eastern Massachusetts- one thought kept hitting me. Whitey Bulger used to dump bodies on the banks of the Neponset River. He was about 100 yards from one of America's main highways. He must have been able sit on his own balls.
I suppose some audacity is a must in his line of work, and nobody knew the dark spots of the town better than Whitey Bulger... but we'd be driving 10 minutes in isolation on some roads without being 100% sure that we could get a (theoretical) body out of the trunk and into the ground without being seen, even in a Nowhere Land like Lakeville.
That's why I got into Journalism, folks. I just murder time. Mine, yours, Jessica's... whatever pays.
Lingan Street, Halifax
The lakes region of the interior South Shore has been used as a dumping ground by numerous killers. The killers that I'm aware of used the Chaffin Reservoir in Pembroke and Bartlett's Pit in Pembroke instead of the wastelands at the end of Lingan Street in Halifax. They also got caught.
This road punches through the swamplands on the south side of West Monponsett Lake. It ends at a former campground, if you are willing to circumvent some gates. It looks exactly like where they should have based the Friday The 13th movie.
I used to teach in the city, and I'd take my little Hood Rats out into this area for field trips. Several of my students, far more used to an urban environment, were nervous about being in such a remote area... even in broad daylight.
"This is the s**t where Michael Myers kills all those white girls," one kid from Roxbury told me. "Black people have more sense than to go to places like this." I really couldn't argue with him.
I used to date a girl from Lingan Street. "Date" may be the wrong term, as I do believe that she could barely stand me. She looked like she could scrap some, too. I'm probably lucky that I'm not pushing up daisies at the end of Lingan Street.
Thompson Street, Middleboro/Halifax
You know that you're in the boondocks when you can host drag races on one of the main roads (Route 105, nonetheless) in this area without getting caught or endangering innocents.
I don't want to say that I have gone out early on Sunday morning and seen crude START/FINISH lines painted a quarter mile apart on a straightaway here... but would you look at that, I just said it!
This road is also full of farms. It's a great place to buy flowers, as well as a great place to go if you have never seen a cow in person.
Much like that Camp Murder from the Lingan Street section of this article, this is another spot that I used to field trip my city students to when I lived in Monponsett. Even a genuinely dangerous thug student becomes a cute 7 year old when he sees farm animals for the first time.
This is a beautiful road for the most part. I just shot the scariest part of it.
Will's Work Road, Mashpee
I fished WWR off of Facebook suggestions, and we here at CCM thank the readers for their help.
We'll use WW Road (which I didn't feel like driving to) and this awful screen cap to illustrate a few things this list is looking for.
It's easier if you highlight "Will's Work Road" and Google up the map, but we can see enough here for the basics.
Isolated area? A beach? A marsh? No houses? Minimum expectation of police interference, perhaps a border area of two towns? Plenty of road? Chance of wildlife? In our coverage area?
Will's Work Road, off of Waquoit Bay meets all of those criteria. She'll hold a nice rank on this list if we decide to get competitive.
Oyster Way/Seapuit River Road/Indian Trail, Osterville
This is another reader submission, much obliged!
Oyster Way has a lot of the same features that Will's Work Road enjoys, such as a tidal bay, some nice road to work with and a lot of forest cover.
Working among the wealthy neighborhoods entails a certain set of risks. For starters, you have to get by a gate. Also, the kind of guy who is disposing of a washing machine illegally might stand out in Osterville. Calls to the police will be investigated promptly. There is the chance of video surveillance.
Added bonus: After burying that body, why not unwind with 18 holes at the neighboring Oyster Harbors Golf Club? Not a member? Hey, you've already buried one body today, why shirk at adding a bothersome golf course employee onto your tab with God? God may even take your side on it, there is little guidance in the Bible concerning golf etiquette.
Big ups for being the second Indian Trail to make the list.
Service Road, Sandwich
You could actually classify this as anything between Sandwich and Shootflying Hill in Centerville.
This one requires a Bulger level of testicular fortitude, as you are 50 feet from Route 6 when doing whatever it is that you're up to. However, with the cover of darkness, some foliage... may as well be the deepest, darkest part of the forest, right?
It can also be highly-used, and that usage can spike unexpectedly if there is an accident on Route 6 and people start seeking alternate routes.
This is a nice, safe road that is fine for teaching the teen to drive on. However, the people you do encounter there may be in a great hurry.
Navigation Road, West Barnstable
The Cape is dotted with fire roads, roads that were abandoned after hurricane flooding, Indian trails and service roads. The minor width of the Cape prevents you from getting too isolated, but it can be done... especially in the off-season.
On this road I visualize a guy with every possible sort of infraction on his driving record who just needs "Deer Strike" to win a sort of Irish Lottery with the insurers.
Don't let the name of the road intimidate you... it's a straight line. "Forward" is all the navigation you'll need.
This was another FB suggestion, many thanks! The comments around the FB suggestion include "I drove down there, and my gas tank fell off the car."
Collins Road, Truro
This was the stomping grounds for the Beast Of Truro, who tore up a bunch of livestock in 1981-82.
The Pamet Puma was neither caught nor identified. There were numerous sightings, including one by a Truro policeman.
Some people said it was a pack of dogs, some thought it was a cougar, some thought it was a monster like The Beast Of Bray Road.
He eventually just went away... or did he?
If a monster, mythical or not, roamed your road... your road is going to be on this list, my friend.
Bonus:
Not Massachusetts, but here's what Stanley Kubrick did with the Isolated Road theme....
We hoped you enjoyed.... here's some more Duxbury, Plymouth and Halifax , below...
via Kerri Yanovitch Smith
Did we leave any roads out that deserve to be on this list? Let us know!
