FALL COLOUR IN THE SNOW

Today was our 44^th anniversary.  Did I stay home and treat Aileen like a queen?  Did take her out for supper?  Unfortunately, I must admit to neither.  She stayed home and did laundry and baked gluten free bread.  She also made our supper.  Aileen would not have enjoyed the trip today as I got home at 5:40 after 425 kms (266 miles).  She doesn’t  appreciate driving in slippery mud or snow or really bumpy roads either.

I was out the door before eight bound for the high mountains.  I went to Ridgeway, CO then found County Road 7 (Dallas Creek Road) which turned out to be a winner.  It was a mostly single width road but it was astounding how many other vehicles I met up there at the 10,000 plus foot level.  There must have been forty people up there, and many had tripods.  One chap was from Germany, another from Alaska and several other US states licence plates were visible.  It would have been better to have been an hour or two earlier but I didn’t feel like getting up too early when I wasn’t sure the weather was going to co-operate.  It was more than two hours of fast driving to get to my first shots on the 7 road as it was.  I wouldn’t want to drive that fast in the dark (there’s too many deer on the highways) so it would be closer to three hours from the motor home.   I was pretty happy with what I got.

I tried another area on the other side of Dallas Divide but it bombed.  I went back to Ridgeway and took the Owl Creek Pass Road but the light died on me.  It was a much rougher road as there hadn’t been any maintenance for some time by the looks of it.  I met a surprising number of Jeepers(Jeeps) and Peepers (Leaf Peeper is the name given to those of us checking out the fall colour) along this road.  Most of the road only had two ruts in the snow so exciting when meeting another car on a corner.

We’ve had some rain the past few days since arriving here in Grand Junction.  The rivers and canals are running very muddy and the mountains mostly have snow.  We went to the Texas Roadhouse last night with three couples, from Caliente, our Arizona hangout, who all live in Grand Junction.   The food was tasty and reasonably priced but I still had an upset stomach in the night.  We enjoyed visiting and catching up with the friends.  I spent part of two days this week making slide shows set to music using my ProShow program and I’m now caught up.  We played Mexican Train with Ken and Marie one night and while Aileen was clear winner,  I was a distant fourth.

The above images were all taken on Dallas Creek Rd

This image was taken on the main highway at Dallas divide

This image and the rest following were all taken along the Owl Creek Pass Road