Fall Foliage 2012: To Be or Not To Be

I am not sure if I am just way to eager for the foliage season to appear because I want to take pictures of it or if there really is going to be some kind of problem with it this year due to the super hot dry summer we had.  It seems like its taking forever to get here to the Champlain Valley (I hear its pretty good in the NEK) and what I have seen so far is kind of...ugly!  Lots of brown, dead, crispy leaves instead of the rich reds, oranges, and yellows we usually get here in Vermont.

BUT I have been going through my external 1 terabyte hard drive trying to make space on it so I don't have to buy another one quite yet, and looking at Fall photos from 2010 and 2011 shows me that really the first 2 weeks of October are the best here.  So I need to just hold my horses.

I did go on a few easy hikes (and 1 harder one) over the past couple of weeks, and here are the best results of what I've seen so far:

Prospect Rock (Long Trail in Johnson) September 15, 2012:

Underhill State Park Sept. 19, 2012:

Niquette Bay State Park (Allen Trail) September 25, 2012:

Tower Road in Graniteville, VT September 26, 2012:

As you can see, Graniteville, which is in mid-state VT but a higher elevation, has the best so far!  If the weather cooperates I hope to get out as much as possible (also when this head cold goes away) to see how it is progressing elsewhere!  

On my list of places to go: 

Stowe

Underhill

Cambridge

Ripton

Middlebury

Burlington

Lake Elmore

Lake Carmi

Newport/Derby

Its possible I will only be able to go to one or two of these places but I'm hoping for a few...its hard because I only have about 5 hours of "free" time between when I drop the last kid off at school and then have to pick up the first kid.