South Coast Fall Foliage

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...

Much love to the South Coast!

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!

King Tide At Duxbury Beach

We headed out to Duxbury Beach to check out the King Tide. A king tide is when the moon, sun and Earth align. It increases gravitational pull on the ocean, and produces some of the higher tides of the year. We hit town as the king tide was receding... it was only 11.8 feet today, down from 12.8 Wednesday. It'll be down to 10.1 soon.

A tide two feet above normal would be trouble if it went down as a storm hit, which is why October is the start of Nor'easter season. However, Duxbury was No Problemo today. They probably had some spray come over the wall and they did have a Coastal Flood Advisory, but no damage was done today.

Wave good-bye to the King Tide.

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!

Cruise Ship Hits Railroad Bridge On Cape Cod Canal

Oops!

The Viking Star, a 900 passenger cruise ship, struck the railroad bridge on the Cape Cod Canal yesterday.

No one was injured, and the bridge seems to have just lost some paint. US Army Corps Of Engineers workers heard scraping sounds as the tall cruise ship worked through the Cape's favorite man-made river.

The railroad bridge is 135 feet over the water. I have no idea how tall the Viking Star is, and I looked, too. I'm guessing 135 feet and 6 inches. it either has 9 decks or 14 decks, depending on if you believe the Cape Cod Times or Wikipedia.

I actually watched the Viking Star as she approached the Bourne Bridge, but I was too far away and behind too many trees to see much of it. There were reports on Facebook that she also hit the Bourne Bridge, but nothing is turning up on those there Internets.

We'll keep you updated. You never know if the diagnosis will be worse once they look at it with the daylight.

It was just like that, just with a larger boat and contact.

Cape Cod Canal-Only Fog

This was Saturday's fog, but there was a slight release delay as I pondered the "terrible pics of a cool phenomena" question.

I lacked the testicular fortitude to dash across the four lanes and shoot through the bars. This is what I would imagine that prison looks like in Heaven. 

The fog was the result of some temperature contrast between "cold morning" and "warm water." I was shooting from the side where the sun had been shining on the Canal longer.... or the people on the Cape side be smokin' up a few bales of that sticky-icky-icky. 

I kind of one-two'd these shots quickly, mostly to show how the fog was creeping over Buzzards Bay.

I'll get a better camera some day, honest.