Rocky Mountain NP ... at night

We stayed in Estes this weekend, so I took the opportunity to try out some nighttime photography in the Park. The wind was Howling with a capital H, so it was futile to keep my flimsy tripod still.

Moon over Long's:





If you've ever wondered how far a star moves in the night sky in 6 minutes, now you know. The gap in the trails is from a gust of wind that almost blew the camera over. Also a plane inconsiderately flew right through my shot.
We were also able to catch a few lingering fall colors:


And we had a little kid fun, too:

Snow on Long's Peak

Snow on Long's Peak is always a good sign in my book.

Gobble Gobble

I ran into this guy (and 4 of his friends) mountain biking yesterday.

Boulder

A family wedding brought us to Boulder last weekend.

Ahh, the People's Republic of Boulder. Home of CU, Pearl Street, the Flatirons and the most left-leaning politics between here and San Francisco. Not that there's anything wrong with that. All discussion about Pet Guardians and Municipal Carbon Taxing aside, it's a downright enjoyable place to visit. A few pictures:

Aforementioned Flatirons:

And a view the other way:

Face to face with a Mountain Lion:
(Luckily he was stuffed and on display on the Pearl Street Mall :) )

Also, this provides me an opportunity to link up to my all-time favorite article about Boulder, by Marc Peruzzi.

Read the article, but if you're short on time, here are my favorite bits:

"Boulder exudes a unique blend of over-the-top liberalism and extreme fitness. How to describe it . . . If Lance Armstrong and Amy Goodman had a love child, the prodigy would drive his Audi A4 to Boulder, buy a Maverick to decorate the roof rack, and then not ride the $5,000 bike because he didn't want to encroach upon mountain lion habitat."

and

"My four-year-old has attended two birthday parties in climbing gyms—little dude will be free-soloing soon."

Funny stuff! :)

New Pet

After much research and debate we ended up with a new Bearded Dragon this weekend. We named him "Spike" for obvious reasons.

Harvest Moon

The prospect of watching the Harvest Moon set over Horsetooth Rock inspired me to drag my backside out of bed at 5 am and ride up to Herrington trail to take these pictures.


Obviously, my pictures would be more spectacular if I was further from the rock and used a big, expensive zoom lens. But (a) I don't have a big, expensive zoom lens, and (b) this was really just a good excuse to go on a mountain bike ride, anyway.

Camping with Dad

The kids and I took advantage of an opportunity to give Mom some much-needed rest and took off north in the van for a little adventure and maybe the prospect of seeing a yellow leaf or two.

We were hoping for (and received) better weather than last year at this same time when it looked like this:

The camping spot - photo credit: self-timer:




Looking' for critters in a creek:
Since Mom wasn't there we were free to run and jump with sharp sticks around the fire. :)

Z out standing, er sitting, in his field:

Mother Nature put on a good light show for us:

The van glows:
Night sky shots = work in progress:
M lost her first tooth on Sunday morning!
An old house in the Laramie River Valley:

The end.