North American Fall Foliage for the 11th Year in a Row

I would normally say: American Fall Foliage, but last year was the first time that I witnessed a little Canadian fall foliage. The places that I visited the most were Cloudcroft, New Mexico on the second weekend of October as well different parts of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, (especially McKittrick Canyon) in either late October or early to mid-November. 

For some reason I was invited to join the Pixel Superfans Facebook page, a place to share photos taken with a Pixel phone. Someone shared photos taken in the mountains around Salt Lake City around September 20th. I realized that the best fall colors in the world are not limited to the eastern North American deciduous forests.

This year I decided to check this place out myself, as well as taking some time to visit museums that were closed in the early days of the pandemic. For the first time ever, I rented a car on a Friday night. I drove from Salt Lake City to Park City, the Wasatch Mountains State Park, and Midway a few hours later. Most of the orange and red came from canyon maples. Most of the aspen trees were still green at higher elevations, and just like in New Mexico, these did not have too many leaves when growing close to these maples. These pictures were taken on September 21st, 2024:

Going back to the Salt Lake City area near Provo you can find this waterfall, which is located at a lower elevation. Due to the lower elevation, the few canyon maples or bigtooth maples (Acer grandidentatum) that surrounded it had barely started to change color:

On the southwestern side of the city, there is a road called "Butterfield Canyon Trail." I studied and researched different places besides the areas that I visited earlier in the morning, which are located behind the mountains on the eastern side of the Salt Lake City area. This seemed to be a nice road to drive through:

It was nice until the road narrowed without warning. There were falling rocks coming from the mountain on the right side of the road, and there were cliffs on the left side. Cars were coming from the other way, and we had to find a way to safely dodge each other without having one of us fall off the cliff. Where should I turn to go back? How far does the road take you? As soon as I found a small area to turn around, I decided to park the car and then walk a few yards to take these awesome pictures:

If you choose to visit this road, I would not recommend driving any further than mile 4. The car was still clean on the outside, but I had inadvertently put dirt and some leaves on the inside. I still decided to wash it in order to use the free vacuums, hoping to avoid any extra charges. Before returning the car that I had leased for 24 hours there was enough time to visit the capitol, and a cathedral to go to mass. The cathedral that is shown after the pictures of the capitol was the only place that I found to be open in June 2020 due to covid:

The following day I had some time to spare, so I decided to visit the museums that were closed in 2020, as well as a botanical garden that I heard about at the very last minute. I started with the Natural History Museum, followed by the Botanical Garden, and an art museum:

The downtown area is a nice area to walk around. There's a free small science museum and planetarium. The museum itself is free:

I might come back once the Mormon temple is reopened, while I also get to visit other areas to see the fall colors.