After a whirlwind 2016, me and my wife were both ready to take a well-deserved break by the time Fall of 2016 rolled around. We decided to head to the colorful state of Colorado for our annual road trip. The plan was simple, hit of the fall foliage hot spots and get a whole bunch of amazing photographs and create a lot of memories in the process.
Rustic fence and aspen grove are plenty on the country roads all around Ridgway.
I actually purchased two books to get a feel of the geographical location of all the fall color hot spots and the planner in me was having a great time getting all the locations marked on google maps. I can't recommend highly enough, both John Fielder's guide to Colorado and Jason Hatfield's Colorado's fall colors. Both provided me with invaluable info about fall hot spots for the entire state of Colorado. Once we selected the locations we wanted to include in the trip I realized that most of the locations are centered around two towns, Aspen which came as no big surprise due to its popularity and the little known town of Ridgway.
Ridgway was a true hidden gem of a town with rustic country roads leading all the way deep into the majestic San Juan mountains with golden aspen groves everywhere. We explored County Roads 5, 7, 8, 9 and the majestic Last Dollar Road and tested our little Subaru to its limits but came back with some stunning shots.