Very Late Fall Foliage Tour Of SE Mass

We'd recommend hurrying if you want to see some fall foliage in 2020. It is very late in the season, and many of the leaves are brown. Much of the area is post-peak already, although you can still see some color if you are willing to drive around a bit. If not, we did it for you.

We had to maximize our trips this year, so we stuck to interior Plymouth and Bristol Counties. While there is good foliage along the coast (this picture is from Mattapoisett, I believe), the numbers favor someone going inland. The coast tends to be pine-heavy, and that isn't optimal.

We're pretty late in the season in a game where days make a difference. This is the East Middleboro 4-H building on October 20th...

...and October 24th.

Still, if you want foliage, you'd better stick to SE Massachusetts. Everything else in New England is well past-peak. You have to go to Pennsylvania to get to the next peak area. There's actually a foliage map that backs my word, in case you think I'm just shilling for the region.

Lacking the calendar-worthy mountains of New Hampshire, Vermont or even the other end of the state, a SE Massachusetts leaf-peeper is often reduced to firing away at some dude's house. I'm invading their privacy some, but more in a "They have a cool tree in their yard" way than a home invasion or anything.

The big orange tree is hugging the little green tree, see? 

This is the Charlie Brown Tree of the fall foliage season... although in 20 years this tree will be an MVP candidate, especially with that church behind it.

We had three main foliage runs for this article. We did Route 105 in Marion up to Route 106 in Halifax and then down Route 80 into Plymouth. We also spent a day hanging around in Mattapoisett/Marion on side roads, and a day in Rochester on the side roads.

There is also a bit of Bourne and Wareham in the mix. 

South Coast Credibility

You rarely see New Hampshire foliage calendars with shots at somebody's insurance agency parking lot, but you gotta take what you can get on October 27th. 

The wires drive us crazy too, but part of our Primary Directive is to not walk into somebody's yard for a shot.

Driver drives, photographer rides shotgun.

It's late enough in the season that I wouldn't wait for the weekend to check the foliage. This is more true with Halloween on a Saturday. You don't want to run over five kids because you are looking for cool trees. You wouldn't see cool enough trees to justify the risk of f*cking up a whole family of trick or treaters who crossed the street at the wrong time. You'd be in jail, and some Crip would be like "What are you in here for?" You'd reply along the lines of "I ran over trick or treaters while looking at fall foliage." The Crip would ask "Did you see cool foliage?" You'd have to admit that you didn't, and he'd be like "You really want to go around October 20th in Southeastern Massachusetts." Then he'd shank you, because leaf-peepers play for blood. At least one of the Tookie Williams murders was over a fall foliage disagreement.

We only had full sunlight for a few hours of the many hours we were out looking at trees. October is a busy month, and on any ride, we are looking for foliage, cranberry bogs, cool Halloween decorations, farm stuff, pumpkin patches, etc...

We stuck to the mainland. Cape Cod is a tougher foliage trip. If we got out 3-5 times, we may have worked a Cape trip into it. I think the Cape peaks before the interior South Shore/South Coast.

Not much foliage there, but the tree rules. Some old guy planted it for his wife. Rochester is one of my favorite towns.

Sustained South Coast Credibility

My boy nailed it when he chose that tree. I hope his wife hated it when he planted it, and she reads this and gets mad. You could flip the genders in that observation and not lower my enjoyment any.

We tried to drive under the tree and shoot up to catch the sunlight through the leaves, but we screwed it up 3 times and weren't willing to drive through a 4th or 5th time.

Cemeteries always have good trees, which is tough, because to enjoy it properly, you have to walk through graveyards in late October.

Really Doe

There may be a science type reason for this, but it was easier finding yellow trees than it was finding red trees on the 27th.

We managed to avoid a heavy windstorm during Leaf Drop season, which means that the trees have a little Christmas tree skirt made from their own leaves. There's a better picture of this phenomena later in the article.

South Shore Credibility

As you can see, we weren't pondering the Leaf Skirt phenomena when we were framing this shot. Cool tree, though...

It's tough to get angry at whoever sited the church so that the power lines get in the way of our shot. For one, it's a church, it's tough to get angry with churches. Two, it may have gone up before electricity came to the area. You get that a lot in Plymouth County. The concept of power lines most likely was 150 years ahead of whoever built the church. .

I think there is some symbolic reason that we keep seeing this kind of tree in graveyards. If someone knows, hit us up in the comments.

I'm not 100% sure how this tree ends up this way. The orange side is east-facing, if I remember correctly.

Piling on the South Shore Credibility

I think I got here (Kingston) about a week late, hence the brownish rather than reddish tint. I actually tried to save this shot photo-editing it, but no dice.

On the plus side, we just fired this one out the window as we drove by.

We should have gotten out of the car and eliminated the power lines, but this is a pretty good example of the Leaf Skirt. I think actual tree-studying people probably use a different term for this.

Hustle out there and see what there is to see!