That’s a good point. And I sat through a lot of slide shows…
So it’s not “photos”. What is it? Because there is a lot more pressure on “favored places” than there used to be, and I doubt it’s just a larger population. In particular, there really is an awful lot of landscape that has “stunning fall foliage” in a good year, far more than enough to accommodate everyone who wants to see it in person. Hell, in a good year, my backyard ain’t bad.
Is it that if a particular scene goes viral, lots of other people want to go to exactly that address?
On a trip to Europe in 1999 I took 72 pictures in seven days. It probably cost me $50 in film, developing and printing. $100 in todays money.
In 2019 my wife took over 500 pictures in seven days. Cost was pretty close to zero. If she had to pay for film, developing and printing it would have cost $700. My wife doesn’t think of herself as an “influencer” but any attention she gets on social media is arguably a potential source of business (she is a real estate agent and “life coach”, among other things) and quite a lot of her business has come from people who clicked through to her profile on a variety of social media platforms.
Any my wife is a rank amateur compared with many young people.
The scale is completely different than it was 25 years ago, never mind 40 or 50 years ago.
That is exactly it. And a large part of that is that they want to immediately reshare on Instagram or whatever that they were at that same place the influencer visited.
Both times you were in Europe for 7 days. The logistics of getting you and your wife to Europe for 7 days make a lot more difference to overcrowding an area then the amount of pictures you took. Unless you have some argument that you only visited the most popular tourist traps and spent significantly longer time there.
I believe the influencer angle is BS, it’s used to hide the fact that regular people are choosing to spend their weekends experiencing something over watching TV. It’s what everyone wanted, they’re just not prepared for it.
I can’t think of any number social influences over the last few years that would encourage young people to meet up together outside for a relatively affordable afternoon.
Why isn’t it a leaf viewing road that a farmer gets to use relatively empty 50 weeks a year.
What makes a road a “leaf viewing road”? It’s an ordinary local road, possibly like the one you live on. It’s used by the people who live there. It was paid for by local taxpayers.
If a few hundred leaf peepers want to use it over a few weeks, fine. But if thousands of people all show up at the same time, it stops functioning. And it makes sense to restrict its use to those who need it and who paid for it.
I mean, if those same people ignore No Trespassing signs to go on a farmer’s porch and set out a picnic to photograph, defecate in the barn, trample plants, physically threaten the owner when told to leave, and leave trash everywhere, the roads aren’t the only problem anyway.
Well stated. And it’s not just about the road - there is the impact to the town and neighborhood, which may not be equipped with the necessary infrastructure to handle concentrated crowds of people. As the reports have mentioned, these “leaf viewers” leave behind trash, human waste, trampled crops, and are disrespecting neighbors’ property. The visitors have become a nuisance at a specific time of year.
What makes it the farmers road? The public supporting the road because they want to use the road two weeks out of the year is a valid reason for the public to support road upkeep. Why isn’t that seen as the highest and best use of a shared public resource? Do we shut down beaches in the summer?
Anyway, we absolutely shut down portions of beaches that are overused and being damaged or degraded. And to reiterate, there are plenty of places to see leaves. No one is preventing anyone from enjoying the autumn display.
A town in Southern California had the same problem during the “superbloom” a few years ago:
Although unlike fall foliage, people there were walking off the path and trampling the flowers so they could get their perfect Instagram photo, destroying the thing they came there to see.
Hernandez says they’d heard about the crowds over the weekend, and empathized with the locals. “But then again, they’re not gonna stop us, there’s way too much of us, so we might as well just come,” she says.
Those are crimes, and should be dealt with as such.
Pre-emptive closure of a public road to block access to ALL people, many of whom may very well be respectful, seems like taking a sledgehammer to a nail.
When I pay taxes, I don’t get a checkbox so I can mark which specific roads I want my tax money to support.
I’m seeing a lot of “they’re clogging up our restaurants/stores!” here too.
You mean, they’re buying local products and paying sales tax.
I’m seeing a lot of "Instagram worshippers!!/"leaf peepers!!’ and it’s interesting how each sentence changes when you replace ^^ with “taxpaying citizen.”
I live in the northeast. I often take a leaf peeping trip in the fall. “Leaf peeper” is not an insult, it’s just descriptive. I don’t go to super-crowded places, though. As I’ve mentioned several times, you can see gorgeous foliage almost anywhere in a good year, and some of the interstates provide truly excellent views.
I honestly don’t understand why you think it’s okay for one neighborhood to be overrun.
Neither do i, but my property taxes pay for the roads in my town, and not for the roads in other towns.
Large flash mobs in small public spaces are risky / annoying.
Really large mobs of people in small spaces get first stupid and careless, then aggressive. That can turn into a de facto riot.
What is happening in most of the scenic Northeast is #1. What is happening in the few “magic” spots favored by influencers and their tens of thousands of benighted followers is #3 bordering on #4.
The issue isn’t the total headcount of leaf-peeping tourists in the several northeastern states. It’s their extreme concentration in a few key spots. A phenomenon driven by social media, not by any inherent superiority of the peeping to be had here versus there.
One of the best autumn foliage views I’ve had was at a pyo orchard. It was on a slope, and you could stand there and gawk at the surrounding forest. There were hundreds of tourists there, all paying customers, all very welcome by the establishment. The roads were totally adequate for us to get there.
No one is talking about closing off places like that. Nor rest areas on the interstates. Just a few small places that are getting mobbed.
