Explore these lesser-known U.S. by ways for maximum autumn splendor — from Wisconsin to West Virginia.

Wisconsin’s Lake Superior Scenic Byway

Wisconsin’s 70-mile Lake Superior Scenic Byway traces the coastline of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. About a third of the way through the route, you’ll arrive at Frog Bay National Tribal Park, the nation’s first tribal national park. Here, visitors can hike along several short trails. The autumn colors of all kinds of leaves peak in mid-to-late October.

West Virginia’s Seneca Skyway

Seneca Rocks, a stunning formation with dozens of surrounding hiking trails, was once used by the U.S. Army for wilderness assault training. Stay in the wild without a tent by overnighting at the top of a 65-foot-tall fire tower in Seneca State Forest.

Arizona’s White Mountain Scenic Road

Arizona is one of the best places in the Southwest for changing leaves — if you know where to look. Start at 7,000 feet in the town of Pinetop-Lakeside, where giant maples offer pops of color between the world’s largest contiguous stretch of ponderosa pines.

South Carolina’s Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Byway

The leaves of red maples, box elders, and scarlet and black oaks turn late in northern South Carolina — usually from mid-October to early November. That’s the perfect time to take a spin along the 110-mile Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Byway. It takes visitors through six state parks, offering several overlooks for epic views.

Laura Sharkey breeds mixed-breed dogs, but they’re not Goldendoodles, Chiweenies, Pomskys, or any other designer crosses. She doesn’t even aim for a specific build, size, or coat. “I’m not concerned with what they look like,” she says of her puppies. “I don’t want any genetic pressure other than health and state of mind.”

Sharkey and Eric a Pytlovany, both dog trainers, founded BosunDogs in 2019 after witnessing clients continually face severe behavioral challenges in adopted dogs. They regularly see owners face rehoming or even euthanizing (使安乐死) their pets due to health issues. “I would really love for all families who want a nice dog to be able to get a nice dog —and we don’t have that right now,” says Sharkey, who also owns WOOFS! dog-training centers in Arlington, Virginia. “I decided that the best way I could do that was to breed them.”

Sharkey is part of the growing functional-breeding movement, which raises dogs in small-scale settings to be friendly and healthy pets, with less focus on purebred (纯血统的) status. “I want to breed dogs for what I think is the actual highest function a dog has, especially in this country, which is as a companion animal,” says Sharkey.

In particular, Sharkey hopes to offer an alternative to purebred puppies, around a third of which are bred in high-volume kennels (犬舍). And while some of these facilities are regulated by the USDA and meet standards such as Purdue University’s Canine Care Certified, many don’t pay as much attention to selecting healthy breeding dogs and providing adequate puppy enrichment as small-scale breeders do, says Sara Reusche, owner of Paws Abilities Dog Training in Rochester, Minnesota.

Some concerned with the health and welfare of purebred puppies choose to adopt shelter animals as an alternative. But this route may not be feasible for everyone—especially in high-demand areas, such as the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and West Coast. Twenty years ago, many U. S. shelters euthanized dogs to provide space for new intakes, explains Reusche.

Rx4 Rhythm is one of the programs offered at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Music and Medicine in Baltimore. The program is the brainchild of Dr Alexander Pantelyat, a violin player. He is also a neurologist (神经科医生) who specializes in movement disorders like Parkinson’s. Applying music therapy (疗法) to movement disorders is relatively new; previously, it was mainly used in cancer treatment. He explains, “Just listening to music activates many regions of the brain at the same time.” Now, a growing body of scientific evidence shows that music can be medicine, too.

One study from the Centre for Music and Medicine followed a choir composed of Parkinson’s patients to learn how singing might impact the speaking voice of those patients. After 12 weeks, the singers’ speaking volumes which often fade as Parkinson’s progresses grew demonstrably stronger. The Rx4 Rhythm drumming circle, meanwhile, came out of a 2015 study that showed that Parkinson’s patients had improved their ability to walk after six weeks of drumming practice.

In a review of 400 research papers looking into the neurochemistry of music, Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University, found that playing and listening to music had clear mental and physical health benefits, including improving our immune systems and reducing stress levels. It can also reduce the pain patients are suffering.

Studies show that music can trigger memories and touch parts of the brain that other mediums cannot. Sometimes music can work like miracle. One day, the nursing team at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre asked Sarah, a music therapist, if she could reach out to a patient who was unwilling to engage with staff or be part of any activities. As she started to play one piece of his favorite music on her keyboard, a change came over him. He unfolded his arms, turned towards Black and started to cry. He said through tears. “It was as if the music went places that nothing else could recalls.” He shared afterwards that the music showed up at a moment when it felt like a hug.

Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases (偏差).

Together with his students and collaborators, Professor Keysar has made discoveries about the impact of using a foreign language on choice, the way that language modality affects reasoning, how language affects health decisions and negotiations, and more. In a 2021study, Boaz Keysar, a professor at the University of Chicago in the US, led an experiment concerning how foreign languages relate to human ways of thinking.

Whereas people were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses when choices were presented in their native tongue, they were not influenced by this framing manipulation in a foreign language. People were asked to make a choice: Take a guarantee of one pound or take a 50 percent chance of winning 2.50 pounds. When presented with this choice in their native language, most people took the safe option of only getting one pound. But they were more willing to make the riskier choice when asked in a foreign language, leading to more profits overall, according to The Guardian. As Keysar put it, “People just hate the prospect (前景) of losing, but they hate it less in a foreign language. ”

Keysar and his team did another experiment in which participants were given a series of related words like “dream”, “snooze”, “bed” and “rest”. Later, when asked which words they remembered hearing, people were more likely to mistakenly remember “sleep”, which was not on the list, in their native language. But it was much less likely to happen if they did the test in a foreign language.

The evidence is clear: By learning a foreign language, you’re not just learning a language — you’re gaining a new state of mind.

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