When you live just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, you don’t see a lot of fall leaves. So last Friday my daughter Katie and I traveled an hour to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, one of our favorite spots for hiking and for picture taking, to see if we could find some. The Arboretum officially celebrates its Fall Foliage Finale on Thanksgiving weekend, but we purposely waited a week to avoid the crowds. We took the High Trail into the wilder part of the Arboretum to get a nice workout.

Even before we reached the trail, we were rewarded with orange and yellow hues, but most of the trees were green. I don’t know if most of the trees in the Arboretum just don’t change, or if our night temperatures in the 40s just aren’t cool enough to trigger death.

 

As you can see, our skies were cloudy, which doesn’t often happen here. In fact, we’ve had very few rainy days this year until recently. (As I’m writing this on Monday afternoon, hail is failing outside my window and lightning and thunder are making their presence known.)

Here’s Katie crossing a stream. (Last time we were at the Arboretum, the stream was dry.)

Just beyond the stream was a magnificent example of autumn color.

The views on the high trail were gorgeous.

Crossing the stream on an extension footbridge:

Katie on the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge, the trails are more civilized.

Look at the blazing colors on this tree:

Katie:

And me, with trekking pole:

A little stone cottage:

A pomegranate:

Look at the gnarly trunk of this tree:

And look at this crazy curlicue branch:

 

This little boy and his donkey are sculptures:

My daughter took this photo with her phone. Doesn’t she have a great eye?

This was our third trip to the Arboretum together. You can see pictures of our other trips here and here.

Unless stated otherwise, photographs in this article are by ARHuelsenbeck.