SkyWatch Friday: Colorado

(Poudre Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park)

We had some beautiful skies here in the Bogs yesterday.  The clouds cleared out and the color was an autumnal blue — that clear, crisp, gorgeous blue we normally see in late September and October.

I can’t show you those skies, though.  I was busy getting caught up around the house, processing and freezing vegetables, and getting ready for a visit with my granddaughters this weekend.  I did get out to enjoy the lovely weather and beautiful skies, but didn’t bother with the camera.  To be honest, I still haven’t uploaded all of the photos from our Colorado trip and the thought of more photos to sort through is not appealing to me at this time.  I enjoyed the day and gave no thought at all to taking pictures.

The photo above is from our recent trip to Colorado.  The skies in Colorado were beautiful, too.  They seem to almost always have a deep blue clarity to them that we don’t see often here in the Bogs.  Sometimes, when the days were hot (as they frequently are in August), the skies reminded me of the desert.  The skies in Colorado are bigger than our skies here, too.  We have trees and hills and houses and all sorts of things that block clear views of the sky and horizon.  But out there, the skies are wide open (unless you happen to be in a canyon, in between mountains).  It is one of my favorite things about Colorado.  I never feel claustrophobic there.

Rocky Mountain National Park is a wonderful place for watching the skies and for stargazing.  M and I went out there one night to enjoy looking at the night sky and to watch the meteor showers (the Pleides were at their peak that night).  One of the volunteers at the park is an astrologer and he gave a talk about the night sky, including showing us how to find and identify some of the summer constellations.  I found it all fascinating.

The skies in Colorado are almost constantly changing throughout the day.  At least that is how it has been during our two visits.  The mornings frequently start out clear and blue (as in the above photo taken at Grand Lake).  If you look carefully at that photo (click on it — or any of the photos — for a larger view), you’ll see some clouds building on the horizon.  Those clouds slowly moved in throughout the day.  Sometimes they brought rain.  Sometimes they didn’t.

We saw several rainbows while we were in Colorado.  I have no pictures to show, mostly because they would happen when we were driving down the road and my camera happened to be stored in the trunk of the car.  I usually keep it with me but there were a few times — rainbow times — when I would throw my backpack into the trunk, forgetting that my camera was still in it.

(Shadow Mountain Lake)

I have plenty of photos of the  Colorado skies to share with you in the coming weeks.  Perhaps that should be “in the coming months” as I took over 1500 photos during our two week trip.  It’s possible it’s much more than that but I refuse to admit it as it might make me look like a photography addict or something.

To view beautiful skies from around the world, please click on the link below.

In other news…

M and I are celebrating our 34th wedding anniversary today.  It’s a quiet celebration.  He’s at work doing his work thing and I’m at home with a bushel of tomatoes and another peck of peppers to process.  I’m going to make spaghetti sauce today, which can be frozen.  I’ll work on canning the rest of them sometime this weekend.  We’ll have a real celebration sometime next week (dinner out, champagne, etc.).

We’ll be going to the county fair tomorrow with our granddaughters and their parents, something that has become a bit of a tradition with us.  I’m looking forward to it.