Autumn Colors at Black Moshannon

You remember those crisp, cool, clear days of autumn, when the sky is blue and the temperature and humidity are just perfect? Yeah, me too! Well, we're not having any of those. Instead, we're having lots of dampness and morning fog and mist, with sun promised in the afternoon; except that it seldom arrives.

Which is not to say that I'm whining. (OK, so I am, a little.) And I had some big plans coming up that ended up being cancelled, or at least postponed, on this day. So there's that. And no, I'm not getting into it all here, except to say this: sometimes the best-laid plans of mice and men (and girls with cameras) often go awry. So: let's have a huge sigh over that, and move along, shall we?

My husband and I had talked about going on a day trip to the Quehanna Wild Area on this day, except that he woke up with high blood pressure. He has changed medications recently, and has been having some ups and downs. (And mine wasn't looking too stunning either.) So we decided not to go as far as all of that; in the end, we went to nearby Black Moshannon, where we walked around the lake.

The warm, damp weather means the colors are way on behind here. You might usually expect peak colors in central Pennsylvania by about the middle to third week of October. Right now, the only place where the colors are at peak are places in the northern tier, above Interstate 80. (Which is north of us.)

So all of this is to say: the colors are just starting at Black Moshannon State Park. In fact, the trees are mostly green around the lake, with some standouts here and there. The best colors I found were these, shown in the photo above, which are located just below the spillway of the dam. There are more to come, I know! But this year's foliage show is sort of on the slow path. . . . .

The soundtrack song for a year in which the foliage colors are kinda slow in arriving is this one: Foghat, with Slow Ride.