Aspen at Bear Lake.

It was “free” weekend at Rocky Mountain National Park, meaning everyone in Denver with a car came on Saturday and Sunday to see the aspens change and the elk bugle — two events that decisively mark the season in Colorado. I made the mistake of arriving mid-morning Saturday, with everyone else. There is something very, very wrong about a traffic jam in a national park. I parked and took a hiker’s shuttle, which was also functioning more like the Ginza line in Tokyo than a serene transport to the wonders of nature. All that receded into the background once I’d gotten a mile onto the trails. More than 90 percent of the visitors to Yellowstone National Park never set foot off of concrete, and I suspect the ratio holds in Rocky. That’s as sad as a traffic jam in a national park, but it’s just as true.

The mountains grandly presided over the various processions and spectacles. Elk bugled and mated as tourists idiotically wandered toward them with their digital cameras held in front of the their faces like chalices to the altar. I did my hike, endured another jam-packed shuttle ride (with the driver cursing all the cars illegally parked on the sides of the road) and spent part of the afternoon with the milling crowds in Estes Park; more traffic jams, and shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks. At a coffee shop, the kid at the counter laughed hysterically when I asked him if he considered it a busy day. “Medium,” he said. “Check it out in August.”

The next day I got to the Bear Lake parking lot at 7:30 a.m. and had it to myself. I wanted to climb a mountain and I chose Flattop, an relatively easy 12,320-foot peak. It was a 4.4 mile hike with a 3,000-foot elevation gain. The woods were mostly empty. I ran into a couple of local hikers in their 60s with “Beep or honk when passing” signs attached to their daypacks. The man was a transplant from Jordan, Minn. He was wearing an “Up a Mountain, Down a Beer” T-shirt. “This is what we do on Sundays,” he said.

The trail was rocky, but gently graded, and relentlessly sloped upward. The trees got smaller and more sparsely distributed the higher I got. In 90 minutes, I was above the treeline. The wind picked up. I could see snowy peaks, eye-dropper lakes and in the distance, the shore of the Great Plains. Along the path, I encountered a metal plate, bolted to a boulder. It was headlined “The Mountains Don’t Care.” The sign explained that storms could rise at any moment, and that the paths across Flattop would be hard to follow in a whiteout. Every year, prepared and unprepared hikers die at the whim of the weather and chance.

I made it to the top, and had lunch in the lee of a big rock, out of the wind. I watched other climbers cross a ridge and ascend Hallett Peak (photo). From there, I could see both sides of the Continental Divide. And I could see that the parking lot at Bear Lake was now full. When I got off the trail, there’d be another traffic jam to endure, and on the radio, news of national disarray. The mountains don’t care. Scary, and reassuring at the same time.

The September issue of Coastal Living magazine named Duluth the third best B&B town, after Santa Barbara, Calif., and Troncones, Mexico. Our northern city beat out such B&B icons as Key West, Fla. and Kennebunkport, Maine. The magazine singled out the Firelight Inn for being a place that’s particularly great for birders. The other B&Bs mentioned were Olcott House and Solglimt.

What do you think of these choices? Do you go to Duluth for a vacation, or is it a quick stop on your way to the North Shore or beyond? What are your tips for visiting Duluth?

I hate the term “leaf peepers,” so let’s just dispatch with that now. Why not hue hunters? Deciduous drivers? I know, I know, I’m barking up the wrong tree. So let’s get to the matter at hand. What makes a good fall color road and where are your favorites?

To my mind, fall roads should be lightly traveled two-lanes with a satisfying mix of hills and curves. In other words, they should be fun to drive as well as scenic. Mine are in Otter Tail County, in the northwest part of the state, and to the southeast, in the Bluff Country of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. I also have a soft spot for all of the roads in Itasca State Park (pictured above in 2007), where the orange maples pop against the old-growth white and red pines of the forest. I wrote a more detailed account of my wanderings in Otter Tail County last fall for the Sunday Travel section (Sept. 7).

What are your favorites?