Two Perfect Fall Parks, a New Fat Bear Champion, and an RV Through a Seawall

Good morning! It's Wednesday, September 30 — five experts were asked where fall actually peaks in the national parks and all five named the same two, Fat Bear Week has a new champion, and it isn't Chunk, and the reason you never run from a bear is that the bear is faster than Usain Bolt.

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— OK WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING —

Five Experts, Two Parks, One Answer

> Ask five travel experts to name the best national parks for fall and you'd expect five different answers, a fight, and at least one vote for "wherever the crowds aren't." Instead, all five landed on the same two parks: Rocky Mountain and Acadia. One from each coast's idea of autumn, and both of them places you can drive into with the trailer.

The case for Rocky Mountain isn't just the gold aspens. It's the soundtrack: October is the elk rut, and the bugling carries across the Moraine Park meadows at sunrise whether you got up for it or not. Acadia is the Atlantic version, New England's only national park, where the color runs right down to the water and Cadillac Mountain catches the sunrise before almost anywhere else in the country.

The national parks where you can still get a site with hookups are a shorter list every week as the temps are dropping, which makes this the week to turn the maybe into an itinerary.

— OK BUT A LOT MORE HAPPENED —

A New Champion and 120 Gas Pumps

> Fat Bear Week crowned its 2026 champion last night, and it isn't Chunk. Last year's winner went out in round one, so the crown changed heads. (More)

> Yellowstone starts folding up the map in two weeks. Dunraven Pass, the Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Byway close October 13, and nearly every other park road follows November 1. One fall run left, then it's the Gardiner road or a snowcoach. (More)

> The Southwest is spending this week under a Level 3 of 4 flash flood threat. Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce all made the warning map, parts of the region got a month's rain in a day, and the system parks over Dallas through Thursday. If your route crosses any of it, check conditions now. (More)

> Last weekend's Nor'easter left its mark across several states, with debris from a canceled Maryland music festival in the floodwater. Locals called it the worst flooding in three years, and police were pulling drivers off the avenues. (More)

> A real MLB game inside Grand Teton is suddenly more than a bar argument. A Park Service deputy director walked three potential sites last week, with the White House in the conversation. No permit, no date, likely 2028 at the earliest, and not everyone is happy about the potential tailgate. (More)

> The highway into Joshua Tree is getting two wildlife bridges. After a young mountain lion was killed on Route 62 in April, California put $6 million toward crossings for cougars, bighorn and bears. Surveys and permitting run for years yet, so drive that stretch like the bridge isn't there, because it isn't. (More)

> Snowbirding I-10 this season? There's a Buc-ee's in Arizona now. The chain's first store in the state opened in Goodyear this summer, 74,000 square feet and 120 fuel pumps about two hours from the California line, its closest run at California yet. (More)

— OK BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS —

You Are Not Faster Than a Bear

> Fall is when bears eat around the clock before denning, which puts more of them near trails and campgrounds exactly when the color pulls you out there. So know the numbers: a grizzly hits 40 mph, a black bear 30, and Usain Bolt topped out at 27.3. A grizzly can hold 25-plus for a couple of miles; you can't hold it for a couple of seconds. Running also flips the chase switch. Back away slowly and sideways, keep your eyes on the bear, and keep the spray on your hip, not in the camper, because with practice it deploys in about two seconds.

— OK NOW HERE'S SOME RETAIL THERAPY —

5 Outdoor Games You Can Pack In The RV

> Helinox StringTrees Shuffleboard is a packable outdoor shuffleboard game from the company that probably made your camp chair. For the luxury-leaning couples who treat the campsite like a patio: happy hour now comes with a scoreboard.
Buy on Amazon

> Kan Jam Original Disc Toss is the two-goal flying-disc slam game that sets up in seconds and stores flat. For families parked at a full-hookup site with kids to tire out: loud, fast, and nobody needs the rules explained twice.
Buy on Amazon

> Jazzminton Sport is a paddle game with a net that plays like badminton's mellower, joint-friendly cousin, indoors or out. For weekend warriors on a rained-out Saturday: it moves inside when the forecast cancels the hike.
Buy on Amazon

> Axe Throwing Game puts a five-foot target, eight throwing axes and eight star darts at your campsite, no waiver required. For families with teens who decided cornhole is for the parents.
Buy on Amazon

> Kubb Yard Game Set is the Viking lawn game in rubber wood: topple the other side's blocks, then the king, then argue about the throw that did it. For full-timers with a stretch of open ground and neighbors worth meeting: it fills an afternoon and usually a friendship.
Buy on Amazon

— OK BUT YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO HERE —

Five Octobers, Pick One

> Chuckanut Drive, Washington — Big Sur gets the comparison, but Big Sur doesn't end in oysters. Washington's original scenic byway hangs 20-ish miles of sandstone cliff above Samish Bay, the kind of narrow, curvy road where slow isn't a concession, it's the ride. Camp at Larrabee State Park, the state's first, drop the trailer, and take the truck: tide pools at Clayton Beach, the Fragrance Lake trail up top, and Taylor Shellfish at the bottom, selling oysters straight off the tideflats you just drove above.

> The Halloween trip — October is the one month your itinerary is allowed to be ridiculous, so plan the spooky loop now. Want real ghosts? Pennsylvania fits twenty haunted stops into one road trip, including a ten-acre prison ruin that runs its tours after dark. Prefer your scares scripted? Horror-movie filming locations chain into a real route, and one famous horror house on it rents by the night, pool included.

> The South, on a calendar — Garden & Gun's fall agenda for the whole South is next-trip fuel by date: the Breeders' Cup runs at Keeneland in Lexington October 30 and 31, tall ships fill the Chestertown, Maryland waterfront that same weekend, and Round Top, Texas hosts its film festival in mid-November. Pick an event, and the route plans itself.

> Walla Walla, Washington — The weekend itinerary comes from Sidney Rice, the former Seahawk who won a Super Bowl and then co-founded a wine label. It's harvest season in Washington wine country, and his list runs from Abeja's tasting room to a French brasserie to a golf course in the middle of it all. Wine-country trip without the Napa math.

> North Carolina's mountains, three ways — Do you want your leaf drive to end at a waterfall, an art gallery, or the top of a fire tower? That's the real decision in the NC mountains this October, and Our State mapped three fall drives through the Blue Ridge, one for each answer. The waterfall one stacks High, Triple and Hooker Falls on a single trail system in DuPont State Forest, and the Franklin route finishes at a brewery named for lazy hikers, which by then you won't be.

— OK BUT DID YOU SEE THIS —

> Is Alton, Illinois America's most haunted small town?

> For a few hours in September 1777, the capital of the United States was a courthouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

> Last weekend's nor'easter peeled back a Nantucket beach and exposed wooden ribs that may belong to a schooner lost in 1884.

> A North Carolina couple stopped to see Plymouth Rock and accidentally rammed their RV through the downtown seawall.

> Missouri packed five fall festivals into October, and two of them are entirely about apple butter.

> Inside of America's most popular national parks are also some of America's most charming towns.

The Dump Station Yellowstone spent 43 years keeping cars out, then surrendered on August 1, 1915, a date picked for the extremely dignified reason that the stagecoach ruts had time to dry out.

The Odometer 1,289. That's the age of a whitebark pine just found in Grand Teton's Paintbrush Canyon, the oldest on record, sprouting around the year 732 and confirmed by a doctoral student counting rings under a microscope.

— OK BUT WHO EVEN IS THIS PERSON —

Almost Every Place You RV Is Named for Somebody

> If the Halloween planning above sends you anywhere near St. Louis, you'll hit Alton, Illinois, the river town that showed up earlier in this issue wearing its "America's most haunted small town" title. The ghosts get the tours. The man who named the town has the better story.

In 1805, Rufus Easton was frontier St. Louis's first postmaster and a brand-new territorial judge, which made him one of the most useful men west of the Mississippi to have on your side. Aaron Burr thought so too. The former vice president came through that year recruiting for his western conspiracy and wanted Easton in it. Easton refused and reported the scheme straight to President Jefferson, and Burr's allies made him pay: he was off the bench within a year, and the feud ran hot enough that the Postmaster General personally wrote a letter talking him out of a duel with Burr. Given how Burr's duels tended to end, that letter may be why this story didn't stop in 1806.

Instead, Easton went to Congress as Missouri Territory's delegate in 1814, and in 1817 he laid out a new river town just upriver from St. Louis and settled the score his own way: he put his family on the map. The town is Alton, named for his son. The other kids, Alby, George and Langdon, got the streets. The ghost tours walk right down them and never mention the family once.