Best Places to See Fall Color, Other Than Brown

I wanted to write an article about great places to see the beautiful fall colors we usually get in and around the Ark-La-Tex, then it hit me, we may not get that great show from mother nature this year. The whole mid-south has been undergoing one of the worst heat-waves and drought situations over the last couple of months than we've seen in decades. I don't know about your house, but at mine we've lost about half our shrubs, the lawn is dormant and a couple of trees may not make it back. Just take a look around you as you head to work or school, just about everything that's not pine is suffering badly if not dead already.

Lake Oachita just out of Hot Springs, AR is a great place to go for a fall weekend trip, usually dripping with color in late September and all through October, with a calm lake and some great cabin and camp sites around the area.

The Beaver's Bend area at Broken Bow Lake just North of Broken Bow, Oklahoma is another beautiful location for a weekend excursion. I haven't been there in the fall myself, but I have driven through the area and it is beautiful.

How about watching the Eagles soar above the Talimena Scenic drive out of Mena, AR? That would normally be a fantastic day trip, this year, I don't know.

Another normally beautiful drive in that general direction doesn't have name that I know of, let's call it; the "Southern Side of the Oachita National Forest Fall Color" drive. You take Hwy 71 up through Ashdown, go right when you get to Hwy 70 through Dierks. Circle around the far side of Lake Greeson and come back down Hwy 27 through Murfreesboro and Nashville, then take your pick back to I-30 going through Hope or Fulton, then home. It's a good day trip.

I'm sure all these locations are still going to be scenic and in a lot of ways very pretty. But I wouldn't be surprised if they are a little less colorful this fall, a little more bland after a summer drought that has choked the life out of so much of the trees and grass in the Ark-La-Tex.

If you know of a secret colorful drive that I may have missed here, please feel free to share it below.