GOLDEN, Colo. — As the Colorado weather turns, so too do the leaves.
"I do, I love the turning of the leaves in our beautiful mountains," said Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) spokesperson Tamara Rollison.
“It is my favorite time of the year," said Todd Farrow, park manager at Golden Gate Canyon State Park. "I love to see all the people out in the park and it is obviously beautiful, I understand why they come."
The changing colors draw people in.
“Well, I think this weekend specifically today was kind of the start of our busy season, we call it leaf peeping," Farrow said.
As the mountains glimmer with gold, Farrow and the staff at Golden Gate Canyon State Park get ready for their busiest time of the year. Over the next five weeks, he said they'll welcome about 300,000 visitors to the park.
“We do get overwhelmed by the number of people and visitors," Farrow said. "Everybody just wants to come up and enjoy the colors and people can get frustrated when they don’t have a place to park or drive around looking for a parking spot. It’s kind of like Black Friday at the mall."
Soon, many of Colorado's glowing golden hills will be overflowing with leaf peepers trying to get a gander.
“It’s such a gorgeous time of the year for Colorado as every season is, but particularly when the leaves turn and it does attract a lot of people to drive on the I-70 mountain corridor," Rollison said.
With everyone vying for a view, Rollison said busy routes like I-70 at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel fill up, bringing slow-downs to traffic with it.
“We expect traffic to be heavy going westbound. But where we really expect to see the increase is as people are returning home on I-70 eastbound," Rollison said. "At this time last year, traffic started picking up at 9 in the morning and it continued throughout the day. We were clocking around or counting around 3,000 vehicles an hour by 11 o’clock traveling eastbound on I-70 going through the tunnel. And it’s at that point, we have to meter traffic."
If you're headed out onto I-70, Rollison said drivers should fill up their tank and be prepared to sit in traffic at times.
"But we’ve got a beautiful weekend ahead, we’ve got the leaves turning so we do expect people to head up the mountains. They just need to be extra patient," Rollison said.
State parks like Golden Gate Canyon are setting out no stopping and no parking signs to help keep already narrow routes clear, putting cones out to help guide visitors.
And come prepared with multiple spots and trails picked out so if the trailhead you're looking for is already filled with leaf lookers, you can still find another route you'll enjoy.
"A lot of people get dead set on one particular trail. We do have 11 different trailheads across the park and 35 miles of trail,” Farrow said. “Just having a plan of where you’re going, what you’re doing and you know, be respectful and kind to the resource and to our staff and volunteers out here trying to help."
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