The color starts up high and rides downhill for a month
If it’s October, we’re riding in West Virginia. There’s weekend after weekend and random “I really can’t work today” days that you just can’t stay inside. The whole state looks like it caught fire, and on a bike you get it in a way nobody behind a windshield does — the cool air coming up off the creek in the hollows, the smell of the leaves, the light breaking through the canopy in pieces. West Virginia is close to four-fifths forest. In the fall that isn't a statistic. It's the whole ride.
What makes it different here is that the color doesn't come all at once. It starts on the high ridges — Canaan, the Highland Scenic country, the top of 219 — around the beginning of October, and spends the rest of the month working its way downhill. Miss it up high, ride lower, and you find it again.
By the middle of the month it's in the New River Gorge, which is the best excuse there is to ride the Summersville Loop. Drop down Fayette Station Road, cross the river on the little bridge at the bottom, and look straight up at the big one with the whole gorge lit up around it. Get the timing right and it's Bridge Day weekend, the third Saturday of October, when the bridge opens to people on foot.
The last of the color lands in the south and the Eastern Panhandle at the end of the month — Mills Gap on the Washington Heritage Trail, or the Monroe County covered bridges on the back half of the Hanging Rock Tavern Run.
If this finds you after the leaves are down, mark next October. The roads will be here.
