These were taken a while ago, but we still have a few maple leafs left on a few of the maple trees. It’s interesting how there is so much difference between trees in a grove. It’s my favorite time of year for enjoying maples: when the leafs are bright yellow/orange and the sun shines through them.
I have visited the Dosewallips River Trail for the last few years during autumn for the colors of the maples (both Big Leaf Maples and Vine Maples). Prior to moving to Port Townsend, I would hike up the North Fork Skokomish valley (in Olympic National Park) … it being my favorite valley and closest to Olympia, where I lived at the time. The Dosewallips valley is offers some differences compared to the North Fork Skok … the Dose is in the National Forest (not the National Park) and there are many more big leaf maples along the Dose, whereas the Skok has more vine maples. The North Fork Skokomish is a lot further away from Port Townsend and has just burned this year and is still closed to entry.
We took advantage of a pleasant, sunny day in mid-October to go for a hike to see some autumn colors along the Dosewallips River Trail. See detail above and a shot by Wendy Rose below of me taking this shot.
I liked the way the sun was backlighting the leaves and making the green really “pop”.
The previous post referred to the vine maple as the source of the brightest reds in the lowland Olympics. Here’s a good example (above) as compared to big leaf maple and its yellows (below).
