Sept 17
Sept 19
Sept 28
Oct 12
Monday, September 19, 2011
Our second hiking excursion of the year and Kelly’s first.
We decided to introduce her to high country hiking by heading back to Caribou Ranch Open Space. Again, it’s a fairly level trail. About half of it is a former rail bed, so the ascents and descents are gentle there. The couple of places where it takes off through the woods are still fairly gentle.
This was a sunny day with temperatures in the high 60s, so the coats and sweaters got left home. So did the hiking sticks.
I might as well have left my big camera at home, as the battery was dead the first time I tried to take a picture! All I can think of is that it must have gotten jostled in the car on Saturday and accidentally got turned on. 48 hours on will definitely drain a battery...
So, I used the point and shoot for the day.
We’re still too early for the aspens. They seem to be late turning this year.
These two photos were taken at our first break, near the DeLonde homestead. These show the barn and corral there from the days when this was a horse ranch. This site was used for some scenes for the 1960s version of Stagecoach. The barn is well maintained and the corral is in really good condition. The small house to the left of the barn is used by a resident artist during the summer months.
Our second break came at a small side shoot to the trail which drops down to the banks of South Boulder Creek. There's a horse crossing here and some nice cascades just upstream from the crossing.
This photo shows Kelly taking a picture of the cascades. Another budding photographer???
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Lunch was at the Blue Bird Mine, sitting on the bunkhouse steps again.
The photo on the left shows the trail approaching the bunkhouse and the photo on the right shows the mine entrance. the mine entrance itself has a small building in front of it. This shows the door to that building. There's a sturdy fence blocking access to the mine for safety reasons.
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The trail continued past the mine. At this point, it connected with the old rail bed.
The photo on the left shows the same old iron bedframe we had spotted in a trash heap near the mine. It hasn't deteriorated much in the last year and it's still interesting to shoot.
The photo on the right shows some aspen leaves that were on the ground near a pine cone. Most of the leaves were still green. These were some of the few that had changed color already.
The photo on the left shows the level rail bed as it winds through a grove of aspen trees.
The photo on the right shows a view across the fields to the barn we had stopped at near the beginning of the trail.
It was a good introduction for Kelly. We all felt good when we got back to the car, like we could have hiked another couple of miles. However, after sitting in the car for the drive back, we all stiffened up and creaked around the rest of the evening...