320: Mountains

Longs Peak in the background. Rocky Mountain National Park. Colorado. August 2010.

Last year at the time, M and I were in Colorado, hiking around in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The WordPress Weekly Photo challenge for this week is Mountains, making this a great time to pull out some of those mountain photos that have been languishing in the archives.  Longs Peak is the only “fourteener” (summits over 14,000 feet) in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Longs Peak is also the only mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park I can identify.  And I’m not one hundred percent sure of that.  Mostly sure, though. The rest of the mountains pictured in this post will have to go nameless unless someone comes along and can name them for me.

We’re not taking a summer vacation this year.  No mountains.  No beach.  I miss Colorado already, and we’ve only been there twice.  Perhaps we’ll come up with a reason to go back sometime in the future.

There are so many other places in the world M and I would both like to visit, enough to keep us busy for the rest of our lives.  As soon as I get reasonably caught up with my life, I’m going to sit down and plan out a road trip to Maine.  I’ve never been there.  M has never been there.  I’m not sure he’ll like the idea of a road trip (we can spend more time exploring areas of Maine if we’re not taking our time driving there), but it’s worth running it by him once I have some ideas about where we can go and things we might want to see and/or do.

I did fall in love with the mountains in Colorado.  The Rockies are the first big mountains I’ve had the pleasure to visit and hike around in.  Not that the mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia aren’t big.  They just aren’t as big.  Not nearly as big.  Or as high.  There are no altitude concerns when visiting the mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  None that I know of, at any rate.

The problem I have with photographing mountains is that I can’t seem to capture their beauty and majesty.  Although I’ve seen some good photos of mountains, I seriously doubt any camera can capture the breathtaking awesomeness of mountains.  As with most things, you have to be there to capture it with your own eyes and other senses.

Today’s Outdoor Adventures

We’ve had quite a bit of rain over the past few days and nights.  The pond water level is up and looking much cleaner with the input of fresh water.  The usually boggy parts of Breezy Acres are once again boggy.

Raindrops on pond weeds

The spiders are starting to move indoors.  The goldenrod is really taking off.  The first (planted by us this season) sunflower is now in bloom.  And I harvested the first of the sweet yellow bell peppers this afternoon.

The electric sunflower

It’s breezy today with winds at 17 mph and gusting up to 23 mph.  Clouds have been rolling in and out, some dark and threatening, but their dark is worse than their bite as there hasn’t been any rain since it stopped around 4:00 this morning.  The temperature is much cooler than it has been, in the mid 70s.  It is a lovely day.

Today's view of the pond

I spent most of my outdoor time on my deep cleaning and decluttering project.  The front porch, near the garage, is finished.  I’ll be moving over to the front-front porch, the door that opens into the foyer, tomorrow.  We almost never use that door.  Everyone seems to prefer to come in through the garage which opens into the kitchen.  Now that I’ve trimmed back the mess that was the mint bed, it will be much easier to get to the front-front door (should anyone want to do so).

Monarch butterfly on ironweed flowers

I did take a short walk around the pond just to see what’s happening out there today.  I saw my first monarch butterfly of the season.  There are lots of swallowtails flitting around the flowers, too.

Berries of the Bittersweet Nightshade

Some of the plants that were flowering a few weeks ago now have berries (such as the Bittersweet Nightshade pictured above).  I’ve noticed the swallows beginning to flock in the evenings.

View of the pond from the timothy grass meadow

It’s beginning to look and feel like we’ll have an early autumn this year.  I wouldn’t mind that a bit.  A nice, long, extended autumn would be wonderful.  It’s one of my favorite seasons.

That’s about it from the Bogs for today.  I’ll be back tomorrow with some decluttering ideas I received today via an email from a friend.

Thanks for dropping by and joining me on my walk.  🙂

---