Dammit....looks like I'm missing this one this year. Stupid leaves peaking early....
Nope, about a week late. Usual peak is Sept 27th give or take. This year the peak was Oct 4th.
I spend a week in Algonquin and saw the colours changing almost daily as the temperature plummeted, little change on the 26th when I arrived, and peaking to brilliant colours on many of the maples just as I left on the 3rd.
As I left, there was a steady stream of traffic headed east on Highway 60 through the park, cars pulling on and off shoulders everywhere and people wandering with big cameras and cell-phones on selfie-sticks everywhere on and off the pavement as they found yet another tree to get out and take a picture of.
One of the best places to view is the Track-n-Tower trail. Even though it's a fairly long and for many a tough climb to the high lookout point, that trail's parking lot was jammed full of cars and at least an equal number of cars was parked on both shoulders of the road in front and on either side of the the trail entrance. I've never seen that many cars there and was glad to have done that trail the day before when there was only maybe a couple dozen cars in the lot.
At 1:00pm, heading west on highway 60 as I left the park, the east-bound line-up to get into the park was stopped and extending almost 3 km along the highway leading up west gate.
At 2:30 one of the leaf sightseers pulled off onto the shoulder near Tea Lake, and then moments later decided to pull back out onto the highway, right in front of a bus. That and the ensuing fatality investigation closed the highway in both directions for some 12 hours. With all the mindless people running around all over to get that perfect picture, I'm just surprised that there were not other serious incidents at other highway locations that day.
