Weird Sunset Last Night

It was getting dark on my walk but I had the camera with me and this odd sap drop looked like the claw of a raptor

As I got back the sunset was fading and the area of the actual sunset was clouded in so there were just areas of light clouds out and around like these over the house.

Off in the south west there was one little area where the sky was painted, the pictures really don’t capture it.

Hanging Around On The 15th

There are a few of these in the yard

This one is a blurred but what is weird is the way the stamens swirl counter clockwise and have no normal ends on them.

Another sap pic the droplets on this tree are growing and I think I like this one best of several from the other day because I like the way the droplets are at different levels.  Obviously something I have no control over

I think this is considered a noxious weed but they are pretty cool none the less.

The end of the sunset it was pretty much over by the time I got back from my walk

The moon is almost full, when I turned from the sunset it was right between the power lines.

In The Backyard With Elaine

The turkeys were back, there is one tiny one that is about half the size of the other babies but I wasn’t able to catch a photo of it.

We have a circus rose that we thought had died then it came back last year but didn’t flower now this year it had this red bloom that is clearly not a circus rose so the root must have been what survived and the circus was on the root stock of a simple red rose.  That is ok with us we like red roses too.

 

Close up of the lily

 

One group of daisies was kind of beat up and eaten so this little guy may be the culprit.

When I was out back there were a couple little hummers by the feeder, my camera can focus fast enough to catch them in the air, but they decided to sit a spell today.

Elaine, the last of our Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, followed me into the yard today.  She is 13, and three of the others died at 13, her mother, her brother and her sister.  13 is old for this breed, so there may not be much time left to capture her image.

 

Around the Neighborhood on the 11th and 12th

Every year there seems to be flowers I’ve never seen before here and these  have been starting to pop up here and there.

When I went to down down at the bottom of cat creek there were a couple of horses on the loose.  All of the horses that live down there all seemed to be where they belonged this one stopped to look at me but the other wouldn’t and the other looked kind of tattered it hadn’t been brushed down so it had a few clumps of winter hair and the main was a tangled mess.  When I went by the house that has the most horses no one was home so I don’t know where these horses belong.

For some reason the turkey and deer always seem to come around the house at the same times   The turkey had some little ones with them it was hard to get a picture of them because the back yard is full of plants bigger than they are so you just see these little brownish specks of movement.

A couple does showed up and then a few minutes later a buck was with them

He was leaning over the little fence trying to eat some leaves off our apricot tree so I said “hey buck, stop eating that tree, it’s off limits” and he turned to look at me and I wondered if he may have been the same buck that was nibbling off the bird feeder early last winter.  Then he tried to nible again and I had to tell him not to again then he wandered away.

 

We’ve been getting afternoon thunderstorms so hopefully that will bring back my sunsets since we have had so few for weeks on end.  This one was kind of ho hum though.

 

Sunset On The 10th

I took this one panorama it’s a little blurred in parts big, but it looks ok small LOL

 

July 8th Around the House

Our lilies started to bloom and I noticed a big bunch in town in the plantings of the City Market parking lot too.

I went down to the end of Doc Adams to watch the sunset and there had been some lingering thunder storms.   After I took these photos I turned around and Pagosa Peak had a squall line passing that was lit up by the sunset.

 

 

Pagosa Peak 

Road Trip Day Two - Molas Pass

After going over Red Mountain Pass (11,075) you come to the small town of Silverton, by this time it had been a long day and we didn’t stop in Silverton at all.  I thought picture taking was done for the day but when we reached the top of Molas Pass (10,899) there was a big view area with a restroom.  Even though it was pretty dark with all the storm clouds I took a few shots.  When you leave Molas Pass you go down just a little and then go over Coal Bank Pass(10,640) and past the ski resort and down into Durango.  As we got closer to Durango we broke out of the clouds and it was still sunny, but I sure didn’t care about taking any photos, north of town where I never really venture.  I was just ready to get home which is 60 miles east of Durango still.

Here is a Panorama of the pass area it is amazingly beautiful up there, there was a little lake I could see down hill a little ways.  I would love to head back up to this point for a day trip on a nice day for photos.  It’s about 100 miles or so from home so it could be a leisurely day trip.

 

Road Trip Day Two - Ridgeway to Ouray

Coming into Ridgeway the storms were really building you could still see the beautiful mountains, but it wasn’t ideal photo taking conditions :-)  I’m not sure why I didn’t think to do a panorama at this spot, probably just because the clouds were so thick.

 

We stopped in Ouray at the visitor’s center and right off the parking lot is the Ouray hot springs pool.  One time when I lived in Paonia we were down in the pool in Ouray and the Big Horn sheep came down and were grazing right outside the pool fence it was really cool.

Leaving Ouray up Red Mountain Pass the road is scary, if you don’t like heights, it is thin and curvy and it drops off right at the white line with no guard rails, there is no place to stop and take a picture of that.  If there was, there may be fewer tourists that may traverse is!  Once you get past the scary part though it is gorgeous.  Before you get to the scary part there is a couple places to pull over and over look the town.  There are a couple waterfalls close to town but it was already getting late enough that we didn’t have time to stop and wander.  We had three passes to go over before reaching home.  The road between Ouray and Durango over the tree passes is called the Million Dollar Highway.  Now if they would add a few thousand worth of guard rails LOL

 

The red mountain of Red Mountain Pass

Another view along the way.

Road Trip Day Two - Paonia

At the end of Kebler Pass you meet the North Fork of the Gunnison River, which then runs down through Paonia.

When we arrived in Paonia, a town I used to live in with me ex-husband, we headed up to our old orchard which online said it still offered U-pick.  They had hours posted online and we were excited to see the place.  When we got there no one was around and the place had been trashed.  They changed the name from Valley View Orchards to the Name First Fruits, a name they had already from owning an orchard down in the valley below.  It was shocking and broke my heart to see the state of the orchard and home.  The log home was not being cared for, there was an old car on the lawn, the weeds were overgrown everywhere.  The orchards had been planted so the threes were so close together that the soil couldn’t possible support that density.  The barn that we had repaired and painted still said Valley View Orchards as I had painted it, and the door was falling off the hinges. 

There was no one around and no sales or U-pick of any kind going on but no notice that they were not open no indication they had ever been selling fruit there.  I guess I should have gotten out and taken some pictures but I was too upset.  We had purchased the orchard from an old couple whose family had owned the property for over 100 years.  We felt a responsibility with that to honor the commitment of that family to this sacred piece of land and to know that who my ex sold it to trashed the place like this was like a knife in the heart. 

We left and went to another orchard and got some cherries my brother asked the woman if she knew what had happened up there and she didn’t but directed him to one of the guys in the processing building so he went over to chat.  He it turns out had worked at valley view and lived there for a while after the previous owner had a stroke and was wanting to find a way to buy it when we happened along.  He said the current owners are buying up everything and they are not taking care of any of their places or equipment.  He was also upset about it.  He said they were not doing u-pick or selling up there because they had too much to take care of to have anyone up there running things.  They of course couldn’t be bother to put up a sign saying they were not open for the year!!  He said they were taking the organic cherries up to Aspen and Boulder and selling for 8-9 dollars a pound.  I bet if the folks up in Aspen who believe in organic and sustainable agriculture would be shocked and dismayed at the way these people live on the land and “care” for the organic land they care take.

Heartsick from the whole thing, I took almost no photos for this whole section of the trip The orchard we went to was beautiful right by the river.  As we were driving out of town I realized I had taken no photos and pulled over for this one.

Mt Lamborn and Lands End Mountain from Paonia. with Mt Gunnison way off to the left in the back.

Road Trip Day Two - Lost Lake

About midway through Kebler Pass we took a side trip a couple miles off the main road to Lost Lake.  There is a gorgeous campground there.  My brother and I were wondering if there were so many campsites there in the early 90’s? (not that there are a lot now)  We used to take our cocker spaniel up there from Paonia and he would jump right in the lake for a swim.

When we first pulled up there was a family fishing having a good time

     

Here is a little Panorama

The road back to the kebler pass road

We found some Columbines, there don’t seem to be any in our little corner of Colorado.  We have some little purple flowers that I always thought were some kind of mini columbines but they are Larkspur.  Most that we saw in this area were all white there was only one with the light blue outer petals   

A pretty little creek along the road