It's Not Too Late! You Can Still See Some Fall Colors

From Autoweek

• Fall colors are still popping across the USA

• It's a great excuse to take out your favorite car and drive

• We took a giant Ram 1500 diesel and had a great drive

“Fall colors? What is this, ‘Marth Stewart Living?”

No, this is yet another excuse for you to fire up that heap out in the garage and drive! This week’s excuse is the annual celebration of the end of chlorophyll production in leaves across America and the takeover of xanthophylls, carotenoids and anthocyanins, the chemical pigments making leaves turn yellow, orange and red, in that order.

Here’s how this idea came about: I was assigned to get to Lake Tahoe to drive the new Ram TRX rock-stomper truck (driving impressions embargoed, sorry). They wanted me to fly there. I balked. I asked FCA – Fiat Chrysler Automobiles – if they had something left in the press fleet in which I could drive the 500 miles up there.

“I’ll take anything, you got any Le Barons?”

They gave me instead a 2020 Ram 1500 Limited Crew Cab 4x4. The thing was loaded. The $3995 Black Appearance Package had 22-inch wheels wrapped in 285/45 tires, 19-speaker Harmon Kardon Premium Sound and a few other black items for that sinister look the kids love; Another package offered things like adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist; and for $4995 I got the 3.0-liter turbocharged EcoDiesel V6 making 260 hp, 480 lb ft of torque and was rated at 12,560 pounds of towing capability.

While the base Tradesman Ram 1500 cost only $32,145, my fully loaded, top-of-the-line Limited Crew Cab 4x4 was $75,305 out the door. Don’t scratch it.

Now, the idea of fall colors wasn’t the reason for the trip, but as long as we were on it, why not? So we drove up Hwy. 395 to just north of Bishop, Calif. the first day and pulled off onto some BLM land between Crowley Lake and Benton Hot Springs. That’s one thing to love about the American West, there is still land spreadin’ out so far and wide and so much is open to “dispersed camping.” So we found a dirt road and drove until we found a flat spot between the trees and voila – free lodging! The smoke from the long-burning Creek Fire just over the crest of the Sierra Nevada shifted a little and there above us was the Milky Way, wheeling across the sky like some kind of star-studded carnival ride. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all took their turns on stage as the night progressed, too.