Fog & Dizzying Sun

On Sunday we started with fog in the morning. You can see how dry the winter has been by the very brown grass.

By the afternoon the clouds had mostly cleared, so I took these skywards shots when I took Socks for a walk in Fox Run Park.

Visit the awesome Skywatch Friday meme for more skywards photos.

I'm putting together a new meme which should be live this weekend, on Saturday or Sunday depending on where in the world you live. It's for all photos scanned, they can be old prints or slides, or even new scanned shots if you still shoot on film. It can be found at Sunday Scans - I'll try it for a few weeks, and if it gets some interest and doesn't take too much time to clear out abusive links, I'll keep it going indefinitely, every weekend.

Yet More Trees

For My World Tuesday this week, here are some shots of yet more trees from Fox Run Park today, where Socks and I went for a walk. It doesn't show up in the photos, but frost was melting from the tree tops; I was hoping to catch some of that but the light wasn't right. But I still liked the mottled sunlight on the forest floor.

Tetons

Here are some photos of the Grand Tetons, just south of the Yellowstone park. We made a day-trip through the park on our last day in the area, and I'd highly recommend it.

Photos don't do these impressive mountains justice, but these are my attempts to capture them on one day when the light wasn't very good, for Scenic Sunday. I'd love to go back and spend a week exploring and photographing them at sunrise.

Fox Run Lakes

I've had an overwhelming week, and all I managed to capture were a couple of poor sunrise photos; maybe I'll post them for a laugh as "outtakes" one day. So today I decided to head out into the cool evening, driving to the local park (a little over 1 mile away, about 2 km) shortly before sunset to give Socks a walk and to capture some more acceptable photos to post. So here are some brand-new reflective shots for Skywatch Friday.

These lakes are actually much smaller than they appear here, but the ultra-wide-angle lens exaggerates their size. I feel at least a little better now - Fox Run Park always refreshes me.

Pulpit Rock Plants

I enjoyed seeing a variety of plant life at Pulpit Rock. In places it was dry enough for wild cacti.

Other places it was wet enough for beautiful, overarching trees.

While at times scraggly pine trees were struggling to hold on wherever they could.

All this on a trail that's maybe a mile in length - variety is the word here. To see lots more variety, visit My World Tuesday.

Hoodoos and Views

Just a few miles down the interstate in northern Colorado Springs is the Pulpit Rock park - the main rock formation is clearly visible as you drive by. At the top are various spires which probably qualify as hoodoos.

Even the non-hoodoo rocks are interesting and varied.

And the views are great! The interstate is visible in this picture, starting in the middle-right of the photo and leading left and slightly up.

This makes a nice off-season hike - it's not very long, and because it's lower altitude it's often free of snow. And it's my Scenic Sunday post for the week.

Summer Lightning

I've had no time to take photos the last week, so here's an archived photo from a summer thunderstorm, captured in my yard. It's not the clearest lightning photo I've taken, but I like the way it captured two separate lightning strikes.

I was asked who made the antler arch from the previous post, and unfortunately I don't know. I do know that you can find more skies both dramatic and placid on the great Skywatch Friday meme.