The aspens on Bridger Ridge turned gold sometime Tuesday night, according to the informal network of retirees who monitor the grove from the pullout at mile marker four. By Wednesday morning, seventeen vehicles occupied the six designated parking spaces, with four more idling in the travel lane.

“The color is peaking early this year,” said Marge Holloway, 72, who has photographed the same stand of trees from the same pullout since 1989. “Last year they peaked the third week of September. This year the calendar clearly didn’t get the memo.”

Northbound traffic backed up to the Bridger Bowl turnoff by 9:15 a.m. Drivers exhibited the particular patience reserved for wildlife jams in Yellowstone — creeping forward, stopping, rolling down windows to ask southbound traffic if the color was “worth it.” The consensus: worth it.

A Montana Highway Patrol trooper stationed his cruiser at the pullout entrance by 10 a.m., not to ticket but to exist visibly. He drank coffee from a thermos and waved at the procession of Subarus and Tacomas, each carrying at least one person with a camera phone extended out the window.

“I saw a moose up there Tuesday,” offered Dale Pruitt, pulling a thermal mug from his center console. “Right in the aspens. Nobody believes me because I didn’t get a picture. I was too busy looking at it.”

The color will hold perhaps ten days. The pullout will remain full until the last leaf falls.