A Road with a View

As Family Weekend is approaching, let me recommend one of my favorite fall traditions: viewing the glorious fall leaves on Reynolda Road.  This is something you will want to see when you are here, and you can encourage your students to take a walk or drive as well.

If you exit Wake Forest’s campus from what most consider the main entrance out past the Porter Byrum Welcome Center (aka admissions building), you come to a stoplight at the intersection of Reynolda Road and the road leading to Silas Creek Parkway.  Take a left onto Reynolda Road and you’ll quickly pass Reynolda Village on your left.

Drive slowly down Reynolda.  It is bordered on both sides by old, beautiful, very large trees.  In the summer the trees form a canopy of green and provide welcome shade from the heat, and in the fall the trees display spectacular colors.  You will see every shade of gold, yellow, orange, red, brown.

This view never gets old.  In fact, there are many ‘best’ times to travel Reynolda Road and you can get a different feeling or perspective each time.  You can go early in the morning on a cool day and see the leaves and maybe a little fog, dew-covered grass.  You can go around sunset, and if the sun hits the reddest leaves just right, everything is bathed in a reddish glow.  My personal favorite is on very windy days, when the leaves fall gently down like snow.

If you are here Family Weekend, be sure to see Reynolda Road.  You/your students can see it either by car or by taking the nice walking path from campus (down past Winston Hall).  You can walk all the way up to Reynolda Village, past Reynolda House museum to where the stone gates connect to Reynolda Road.  If you step out past the gates, you can look either way and see a terrific view.

It’s been rainy the last few days so I have not taken any good pictures myself this year.  A quick Google search found several beautiful pictures: one from the Winston-Salem Journal (credit to Doug Rice Photo), one on a Flickr website (credit to @NOSAMK) and one I took last year, respectively.