Colorful Colorado

Roxborough State Park is located about 45 minutes south of Denver.  The park is relatively small but has some nice trails. 

One of four pictures taken from an overlook in Roxborough State Park.

You can see one of the trails in the left hand corner of this photo.  It is interesting how different the rocks were on each side of this small valley. 

Unfortunately there are a lot of homes just behind these red rock flatirons.  There is a peninsula of private land sticking into the park. 

I focus stacked this picture to try and get it sharp throughout the image.  So five pictures were combine to create this shot.  The initial focus point was the white rocks in the foreground. The last focal point was on the farthest red rocks.

I got up an hour before sunrise to capture a picture at Long Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  But I was in for a surprise.  As I entered the Wilderness I hit a snow line and icy roads.  The wind was blowing 30 miles per hour with gusts to 50.  I got blown across an icy parking lot so I packed it in. The only picture I kept was of Rock Lake on the drive out of the wilderness.

I headed to Alamosa Colorado to take some pictures at Great Sand Dunes National Park and capture Aspens on the back roads.  I drove the 4-1/2 hours to Alamosa because the forecast showed mostly sunny skies.  But as you can see by this photo that was not the case.

There are 650 foot tall sand dunes stacked against the mountains in southern Colorado.  There are more sand dune photos later in this blog.

There is a nice drive about thirty miles south of Alamosa that takes you up one watershead, over a mountain pass, and down another watershead.

There were quite a few older buildings along the route.  This building used local building materials, mud walls and a timber roof.

This is an old catholic church.  I like the pattern of the windows on this wall.

Conejos River

I drove up the Conejos River Valley looking for changing Aspens.

I know John Miller has been considering moving to a home with a bigger backyard and neighbors not too close.  I thought this 10x10 cabin would be perfect.

Aspens near Stunner pass.

I like the patterns of green and yellow foliage in this photo.

Upper reaches of Conejos River.

Conejos Peak view with Mix Lake and Platoro Reservoir in the foreground. 

Lookout Mountain.  The runoff from these mountains color the local creeks red. The two local creeks are called Alum creek and Bitter creek 

Alamosa River with the red silt.

Reflection in a small pond along Silverlakes Road.

Recent rains had knocked quite a few Aspen leaves off of the trees.

This stock building was built up against a rock face.  The logs must have been hauled quite a ways.

Back to Great Sand Dunes National Parks for some evening pictures.

If I would have known at this point that the winds were going to pick up to about 40 miles per hour I would have turned around here.  I am about 600 feet up a sand dune.

One of my two $650 pictures.  The sand was blowing so hard my pockets were filling with sand.  You can see my shadow in the right hand corner.  The shadow is cast on blowing sand not the dunes.

Why are these my two $650 pictures? Because that is what it cost me to get my lens and camera fixed after exposing them to a sand storm.

This is my last visit to sand dunes to take pictures.

I hope you enjoyed my Colorful Colorado blog.  The next blog will be from Nepal.