I’ve enjoyed photography for many, many years.  Unfortunately, for most of those years, it was too much an expensive indulgence to do the photography that I would like to have done — and then, after the film was developed, the better prints would end up in an album, or a box, and the negatives would be tossed in a bigger box, filled with all of the negatives from past years.

And, then, of  course, the pictures would just sit, seldom looked at and never shared.

Today, though, with digital photography, once you have the camera, you can take as many photos as you desire and share them with whoever you want with very little expense — unless you want prints, and, even then, there is no film to develop.

I take a LOT of pictures.  Eventually, most of the better ones will end up in online photo galleries based on the locations and/or subject matter.  When we’re not traveling, my photos that I share on the blogs are randomly selected from pictures that have made it to the photo galleries.

This trip, my system — which is evolving from trip to trip — is working much better.  Each photo that I feel is worth keeping is processed with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.  The adjustments I make, for the most part, are the same a film photographer would make — things like cropping, contrast, color saturation, lightness, darkness, and correction of flaws.  I seldom manipulate photos beyond that, though, on some occasions I have to produce a particular effect…, for example, the image of the motor home above, taken in Big Thomson Canyon.

While I still have folders of photos from our May trip that I have yet to “process,” I have done well with the photos from this trip.  By the time we get home, I hope that there will only be a very few folders yet to complete and then I will be able to start working on the photo galleries.

I first saw this big fellow from the road below the campground. He and ten or more other elk had moved up into the trees between the campground, which is on a lateral moraine and the Moraine Park meadows below.

I walked back up the trail to the camper to let Karen know about elk being very close to the campground and then walked a few sites down to see if I could see them again. Sure enough, there they were. This big bull elk was in the woods slowly moving up the valley.

At about the same time, I could hear a bunch of coyotes yipping off in the other direction. We had heard a some a couple of nights before, but not nearly as clearly.

Eventually the bull elk bedded down for the day. I guess they are most active at night with their feeding and breeding. The meadows are closed to the public from 5 PM to 7 AM during the rutting season. The closure started the first week of September.

Where this guy decided to bed down was pretty neat, too — right below our campside. I took the picture of our camper below from the same spot that I shot the image above.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

Rocky Mountain National Park — September 3, 2009

Bear Lake Trail

A "chickeree" -- red squirrel

Another chickeree

Dream Lake

Clark's Nutcracker

Yarrow

Mike

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

Morning in Moraine Park meadows

Bear Lake

I like taking pictures of the sky

Indian Paintbrush

Dream Lake

Chipmunk

Fireweed

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Rocky Mountain National Park — September 2, 2009

Fall River Road - original road to the top

Alpine Visitor Center

Rocky Mountain High Sky

Clark's Nut Cracker

More Rocky Mountain Sky

Clark's nutcracker

Licking discarded ice

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

The smoke has cleared!

Fall River Road

Trail back to visitor center from over 12,000 feet!

Colorado Sky

Elk

A small mountain pond

Pika

Young spike elk in West Horseshoe Park area

Still smoky

Gold mantled ground squirrel on Aluvial Fan Nature Trail

Karen and Mike at Hidden Valley

Controlled burn in the park

Elk in meadow (click for larger panorama view)

A smoky sunset

Rocky Mountain National Park — September 1, 2009

We decided to limit our first full day to lower elevations rather than heading directly to Trail Ridge Road, which runs up over 12,000 feet above sea level.  We started out by going to the visitor centers on the park’s east side.

We got out of the camper fairly early and made it to the Fall River Visitor Center before it opened and saw more elk on the short drive over.

The Fall River Visitor Center is just outside the Fall River entrance station.  We hadn’t planned to spend any time in Estes Park or do any shopping until later in the week, but, since the visitor center wasn’t open yet, we decided to check out an adjacent gift store.

The air in the area was still very smoky. I asked the rangers at the visitor center information counter about it and wasn’t terribly surprised when they told me that it was from the fires in California.

After leaving the Fall River Visitor Center we drove through Estes Park to the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center.  It really isn’t much, as visitor centers go, even though it is at the entrance to the park that has the highest traffic.  The park headquarters is also located at Beaver Meadows.

The next visitor center that we stopped at was at Moraine Meadows, in the same area as the campground.  As we were going to an exhibit area on the upper floor, one of the volunteer nature interpreters was announcing a guided walk on the nature trail at the center.  It was interesting and we learned a few things.

For example, have you ever got a good whiff of a Ponderosa Pine?  Get up close to one and take a smell in one of the cracks in the tree’s bark.  I was surprised to find that it a very pleasant odor, reminiscent of vanilla.

Our next stop was the Alluvial Fan.

In July, 1982, the old Lawn Lake dam failed and sent a torrent of water down Roaring River to Fall River.  Along the way, it swept anything in it’s path away, including trees and huge rocks and boulders.  It left behind an alluvial fan where the steep river mountain valley met the meadow of Horseshoe Park.  Several people died and Estes Park streets were flooded with 6 feet of water.

We’ve visited the Alluvial Fan Nature Trail several times over the years and it’s interesting to see how nature is healing, albeit slowly, the scars of a man-made disaster.

Other places we visited included Beaver Ponds boardwalk, where a short boardwalk takes the visitor into meadows that are slowly being formed as silt is deposited in old beaver ponds, and Hidden Valley, which is one of several commercial ventures that have been returned to a natural state.

For many years, Hidden Valley was a ski area.  The ski lift was closed in 1992 and removed within 10 years.  Restoration of the area to near natural condition continues.

In the evening, we walked from the campground down to the meadow to see if we could see any elk.  There was a large number, spread out over the meadow in the area just below the campground.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

From our campsite

Trail from campground to Moraine Park meadows

Elk on the north lateral moraine, west of campground

One of the younger large bull elk

Rocky Mountain National Park — August 31, 2009

Our last day of travel on our way to Rocky Mountain National Park should have been our shortest of the three days. However, the GPS showed us getting to the park at 5:30 P.M., about the same time we stopped each of the first two days.

We were traveling mostly on two-lane highways, missing most of the freeway traffic — and bypassing most of the urban areas along the eastern slope of the Rockies, though I made one change to our route while traveling that had us going straight into Denver until I got it straightened out when we stopped at a big box store — (WalMart).

Unlike the previous day, there was virtually no wind. Unfortunately it was very hazy and we had no chance to see the mountains until we were almost up to them.

This was the worst day, so far, for delays due to road construction.

On the last stretch of road heading into Estes Park, we had to wait for a lead vehicle to guide us through the construction area.

We were the first in line and a long line of traffic built up behind us. We tow a small car behind our small motorhome and I was a little afraid that I would have to pull over to allow faster vehicles to pass on the hills.

It didn’t happen. I was able to maintain the speed limit going up hill and, after 2 minutes, there was only 2 cars behind us — and by the time I pulled over to let the faster vehicles by, there was only one. The other cars must have all turned off — or got hung up behind a slow vehicle.

As we got closer to Estes Park, the haze began to look more and more like smoke. In other years, when we’ve been in the mountains, there were many forest fires in the mountains to the west of us, which isn’t the case this year. We were wondering if it might not be the fires in California.

Our campsite in Estes Park is wonderful. The campground is on top of a lateral moraine — built up from the debris that was pushed to the side by glaciers during ice ages.

A trail next to us goes down into the meadows where the elk feed and breed during the fall of the year. We’ve already been able to see quite a few elk after supper when we took a drive. It wasn’t until we got back that we realized that they were actually quite near to where we’re camped.

We also drove up to Bear Lake. There are a lot of good trails in the area. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some hiking in.

Oh, and the GPS was wrong.  I’m not sure what error I made, but we were in the park and set up by the middle of the afternoon.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas
July2005
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Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain images

Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain information

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Haw Creek galleries