September 2016 – Chasing the late September fall foliage season in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains high up at a lofty altitude of 10,000 feet brings hillsides filled with shimmering golden aspen leaves.

What a beautiful place for an RV road trip – The San Juan Mountains in late September!
Sometimes vivid colors sparkle in the sun, but fall in the Rockies can also bring snowstorms. We woke up one morning to whiteout blizzard conditions and soon found our RV surrounded by three inches of snow

Hey, it’s snowing!!
The fall foliage season in Colorado is spectacular when the sun is shining and the air is warm. But a layer of pure white snow makes it ever so much more dramatic.

Fall color in the snow… beautiful!
The skies were gray and gloomy, but the leaves were vibrant and bright

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The temps in the mountains were bitterly cold, dropping into the twenties at night. This prompted us to run our furnace as well as our vent-free propane heater and put together a blog post about how to heat an RV in cold weather!
But it was oh-so-beautiful. The juxtaposition of spiky evergreens, trimmed in white snow, against a backdrop of vivid orange and yellow was sensational.

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The scenery in every direction was magnificent.

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Up close, each aspen branch held a little layer of snow.

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After the snow stopped falling, the wind blew, and the yellow and orange aspen leaves fluttered to the ground and settled on the snow.

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The craggy rocks on the mountainsides were covered with a lovely dusting of white lace.

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Out on the Million Dollar Highway, a portion of the San Juan Skyway that goes from Durango to Silverton to Ouray, the views from the passenger seat were awe-inspiring.

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As the roads dried and people got back on the move in their cars again, we saw a few small trailers go by.

Heading into the mountains.

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The hillsides were blanketed in color everywhere we turned.

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The San Juan Mountains are part of the Colorado Mining Belt that was mined intensively for silver and gold in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The rivers in the area run orange from minerals leaching out of the tailings piles left behind by the mines.

The river water runs orange here.
After the snowfall, the reddish water was filled with snow covered rocks and surrounded by evergreens clad in white. Pretty!

The Uncompaghre River.
Eventually the clouds began to dissipate and patches of blue sky began to appear.

Our truck is dwarfed by this incredible mountain. Yay for some blue sky appearing!

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Autumn is gorgeous in many parts of the country, but fall in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado is utterly breathtaking.
The cool thing for RVers is that you can catch the fall colors in Colorado in late September and, if you’re willing to hustle, you can get to other beautiful areas in far distant states to catch their fall foliage show a week or two later in early to mid-October.

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We haven’t done that yet, perhaps sometime in the future. For this year, we savored the colors in Colorado, and were amazed that the mountains seemed to change shades right before our eyes.

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The snow left puddles behind that reflected the trees around them

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And all the leaves on the ground were covered with tiny water droplets.

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By the time we left this part of Colorado, our eyes were tired from staring so hard and taking so many photos!! But what a wonderful kind of fatigue it was.

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If you haven’t experienced a fall foliage season in the aspen filled Rocky Mountains of Colorado, it is something that deserves some special planning!

Happy campers surrounded by astonishing scenery. How wonderful!!
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A few more resources for the San Juan Skyway in Colorado:
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Info for Colorado’s San Juan Skyway:
- San Juan Skyway Details – Colorado Department of Transportation Official Website
- Location of the San Juan Skyway in Colorado – Interactive Google Map
Fun snowy and wintry blog posts from our RV travels:
- Cold Weather RVing – Brrr… (or Ahhhh?!) 01/12/18
- Valles Caldera National Preserve & a Spring Blizzard in New Mexico! 06/28/17
- Bryce Canyon Gone Wild – Tempests, Rainbows & Wildlife 10/09/16
- How to Heat an RV in Cold Weather and Winter Snow Storms 10/07/16
- Newspaper Rock Utah – Petroglyphs and Rock Art from the Ancients 04/06/16
- Snow in the Arizona Desert – A Beautiful Fairy Dusting! 01/13/16
- How To STAY WARM in an RV – Survival Tips for Winter RVing! 11/09/15
- Slip Sliding Away – An Ice Storm in Texas 03/06/15
- San Juan Mountains Colorado – And then it Snowed! 11/14/14
- RV Heater – How to Install a Vent-Free Propane Heater in Your RV 10/11/14
- Crater Lake National Park in Oregon – Bluer than blue! 06/13/14
- From Salt to Snow in Nevada – Bonneville to Lamoille Canyon 06/06/14
Other blog posts from our RV trips to this part of southwestern Colorado:
- Colorado’s San Juan Skyway – An RV Trip in Dazzling Fall Color! 11/18/16
- San Juan Mountains Colorado – And then it Snowed! 11/14/14
- RV Trip on Colorado’s Million Dollar Highway – Ouray to Silverton 11/02/14
- Ouray – Finding the COLOR in Colorado on an RV Trip! 10/26/14
- Colorado GOLD – A Fall Foliage Photography Workshop 10/21/12
- Ridgway, CO – Peak fall foliage on the Dallas Divide – WOW!! 10/19/12
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