Fall-Foliage Trips That Provide Lots of Color

California Discovery Tours is offering a fall-foliage rail and motor-coach tour to Utah, Colorado and New Mexico’s high country. Cost is $747 per person, double occupancy.

The escorted tour, which takes place Sept. 21-29, departs on Amtrak from Orange County and joins Amtrak’s Desert Wind for an overnight ride to Salt Lake City.

Afterward, the group will travel through the Wasatch Mountains on Amtrak’s California Zephyr to Glenwood Springs and an overnight in Aspen. A dramatic motor-coach trip over 12,075-foot Independence Pass in the Rockies and through three national forests is next.

That’s followed by a ride on the Cumbres & Toltec steam train that meanders through the Rio Grande range and into New Mexico.

Two days will be spent in Santa Fe before boarding Amtrak’s Southwest Chief for the return trip. Then there’s an overnight stop in Flagstaff and an excursion to Arizona’s Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.

For more information, contact California Discovery Tours at (800) 338-3222 or (714) 496-6034.

Great Western Tours, which deals exclusively in senior groups, offers a six-day motor-coach “autumn in Arizona� trip for $429 per person, and an eight-day “Ozark mountain jamboree� by air and motor coach for $1,149 per person.

The six-day autumn trip has two departures, Oct. 20 and 27, leaving from Los Angeles to Phoenix, the White Mountains, Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert.

An afternoon excursion on the Arizona Central Railroad, the only way to visit rugged Verde River Canyon, is featured. Historic Jerome and Prescott and an overnight and departing dinner in Prescott’s restored Hassayampa Inn are included in the per-person, double-occupancy price.

The eight-day jamboree departs Los Angeles Oct. 12 and explores the Ozarks during the best of October color, visiting Branson, Hot Springs National Park, Little Rock and Eureka Springs.

The Ozarks’ Passion Play and an excursion on the Eureka Springs and North Arkansas Railway, plus an evening of country music with the Foggy Mountain Boys, are included among the features of the tour. Cost quoted is per person, double occupancy. For more information, contact Great Western Tours at (800) 344-7090.

Two fall-foliage tours highlight Golden Tours of Alhambra’s more than 75 trips.

One is a three-day fall tour to Yosemite that costs $575 per person, double occupancy, leaving Oct. 28 out of San Francisco. If that seems expensive, consider that accommodations and three meals are at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite.

Kentucky and Tennessee are featured in a nine-day air and motor-coach fall-foliage tour leaving Oct. 23 from Los Angeles.

Priced at $1,399 per person, double occupancy, the trip includes stops in Memphis, Nashville and Lexington, plus visits to the Grand Ole Opry, Graceland and the Bluegrass Country.

Golden Tours, which acts as a broker for companies offering tours to those 50 years and older, is a nonprofit organization that charges $6 a year for membership. Only members can sign up for tours.

For more information, contact Golden Tours at (213) 283-7876 or (818) 289-6271.

And for the folks who just can’t get enough of fall foliage, particularly in New England, Gadabout Tours has an “Autumn Panorama� that will depart Los Angeles Sept. 19.

It will visit New England and other states during a 32-day motor-coach excursion.

Costing $2,998 per person, double occupancy, the itinerary includes Las Vegas, Vail, Denver, the Eisenhower Center and Truman Library, Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Ford Museum in Greenfield Village, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, New England, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Colonial Williamsburg. Then it’s back to Los Angeles via the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, the Ozarks, Albuquerque, Gallup and Phoenix.

For more information, contact Gadabout Tours at (800) 952-5068 or (619) 325-5556.