Colorado Places and Beauty

[TerryMiller]

Patti,

With OPERS, which Jo and I are both under, retirement benefits will come two months after the retirement date. In my case, I will get the first two months of retirement around September 1. Jo had lots of leave built up, so she technically is on "terminal" leave and her official retirement date is July 31 and her first benefits will come around October 1. In addition, any leave still in accrual can be paid to the retiree. In my case, that was likely paid around July 12-14 in what is called "supplemental payroll."

We both wanted to have as much leave time accrued as possible so that we could be paid for it, thus not digging so hard into savings for that first couple of months.

Scott will likely be under OLERS instead of OPERS, so if they offer a retirement seminar like OPERS did, he will want to attend that so he can get answers to a lot of questions. Jo and I attended one seminar about 1 1/2 years prior to retirement and then again about 8 months before we retired.

Oh, and the ladies are just resting and waiting for you two.



We try to take a 1 1/2 mile walk at least once a day. Day before yesterday, as we were taking our walk, I happened to notice those two different does lying in the grass and watching us as we passed. I think the wild turkeys are also getting use to us as they don't go skulking off into the brush as much as they did when we first started walking. We see them most every evening around 7:00.

 

[TerryMiller]

Various critters around the RV park where we live are seen just about every time we go for a 1 1/2 mile walk. This first one is of a doe and a fawn. At the time I took this one, I didn't know that there was a second fawn on the other side of some trees and brush. That one can be seen in the second photo, with the doe and the first fawn off to the left and less visible.





Wild turkeys are seen almost every night if we start on our walk about 7:00 pm.



Now, here are three photos of the same buck. The turkeys are actually "wilder" than the deer. The deer have been around the RV park enough to not fear humans too much, so instead of running off, they tend to just watch to see what we are doing.



Closer shot of the same buck. After a time when we saw three older bucks (shown in another thread in General Discussions) and I couldn't get close enough, I changed to my bigger lens, a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom.



Lastly, the same buck but with more of the mountains behind him. The scarred area on the mountainside is actually a quarry. There are something like three different quarries within about 5 to 8 miles of where we are living.

 

[Shadowrider]

You are right. While many don't see it, any decent photographer can see the beauty in what others could call "desolate country." If they aren't photographers and they still see it, they need to be photographers.

I'm cheating here a bit as the photo below is of part of the Cimarron National Grassland, located north of Elkhart, Kansas and just across the river. However, if you know where Elkhart is, you know it isn't very many miles from being in Colorado. We used to run cattle on the south side of the Cimarron River and in Colorado, and it is beautiful to ride that on a horse.

North of Elkhart, one drives up the grade on the north side and there is a pullout leading up to an overlook on the west side of Highway 27. I went up there some years back and took photos because I finally caught that area with the Yucca in bloom. The very last photo, which won't be shown here, was the best with both Yucca in bloom and prickly pear cactus blooming in two different colors, right together. That photo now hangs in only three homes that I know of, including an 8"x10" in our RV.

So, while this "technically" isn't a Colorado photo, it's close enough for me to count as one, because if one followed the river just a few miles west, it would have been.

I bet it was beautiful riding that country on a horse! I made it to Cimarron too, but didn't have the camera with me then. I wish I had a better camera. I will soon though, I'm going to retire my antiquated Powershot Pro1 and buy a real one, Canon 70D!

Great pics you got going on, keep them coming!

 

[TerryMiller]

I bet it was beautiful riding that country on a horse! I made it to Cimarron too, but didn't have the camera with me then. I wish I had a better camera. I will soon though, I'm going to retire my antiquated Powershot Pro1 and buy a real one, Canon 70D!

Great pics you got going on, keep them coming!

I've heard good things about the 70D. When we took our cruise to Alaska in 2005, I used a Nikon Coolpix 5700. On one set of photographs of some Sea Lions on the rocks, to get close to them, I had to use just about all of both optical zoom and digital zoom. My pictures were crappy. I later ran across a guy's pictures on Pbase and found that he was on the exact same cruise as we were and his photos looked good. He was using a Canon 20D with a 300mm lens. That is when I decided it was time to get back to a true single lens reflex.

However, it took fast little grandkids to convince me that a new camera was imperative. I'd focus on the grandkid, but by the time "shutter-lag" took effect, the kid would be gone.

However, I've also learned that good lenses are probably more important than the camera itself. I have a D300 with an 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6. That range in the f/settings causes the lens to take in less light when zoomed out. My 70-200mm f/2.8 does not darken when I zoom out as you can see in those three photos of the buck. The 24-70mm f/2.8 that I have borrowed from a nephew also does not darken. Hopefully, I may be able to get my own 24-70mm.

 

[TerryMiller]

We just got back from our first excursion since arriving in Colorado. We left the great comforts of our luxury fifth wheel and went camping. Yeppers...tents and sleeping in sleeping bags. (Well, it wasn't really that rough. We had cots and air mattresses....sort of a poor man's Select Comfort bed.)

The wife's sister has a son that is a contract worker for the Air Force overseas. Normally, when he comes home on his 1 month vacations, he only has time for a few days of camping because no one wants to spend more than that roughing it. So, he was delighted that we said we would go camping with him for the better part of a week...five days to be exact. The five of us included our nephew and our youngest son, both in their 40's and the wife's sister and the two of us (all of the latter in their '60's.)

We went to a campground called Camp Dick that is located northwest of Boulder and southwest of Estes Park. Reserve America Information on Camp Dick in Colorado

So, in light of sharing photos as well as experiences, here are a few photos of our camping trip.

The first image shows (L to R) our youngest son, the wife, the nephew, and the nephew's mother. I'm not in the image because I took the picture and I can't cook, so no help or comments were needed from me.



Our campsite, on which we had two large tents set up, one of which is barely visible behind our pickup. Oh, and the pickup is a full sized, four-door Ford F150 that appears to be dwarfed by our nephew's Jeep Rubicon. (More on the Jeep later.)



Camp Dick campground is located on the Middle Saint Vrain Creek, and this picture is just one that I took of the creek. "Normal" Colorado creek that is clear and cold.



While the wife's sister has had a hip replaced, she still likes to get out and hike around, although we limit our hiking to her pace and generally don't make them long. This hike was approximately 2 miles round trip, with a lot of it through the forest and the return back on the paved road going back to Camp Dick campground from Peaceful Valley campground. The sister-in-law thought afterwards that she might have found it more pleasurable to have returned on the forest trail instead of walking back on the paved road. Oh, and as a side note, this is the first time I've ever been on a road to a "primitive" campground where the access road is paved and also has speed bumps.



Now, as to the Jeep Rubicon, our nephew likes to do off road travel in the mountains. So, he has "lifted" his Jeep by 4 1/2 inches and put on what I think are 36-inch tires, thus making his vehicle of choice capable of places like the following:





The road and the water crossing are part of the way that we went where we traveled from Camp Dick to Beaver Reservoir where he let air out of the tires for the rocky road to Coney Flats. The water crossing is at Coney Flats. Our return trip to Camp Dick was via another four-wheel road (more challenging, so he wanted to take it on the downhill side instead of climbing), and that road would want to be taken when the weather is dry. Rain on those rocks makes them very slick, leading to possible "bumps with nature."

The last scenic picture was taken as we walked from the parking area at Coney Flats out to a small meadow. The mountains in the background are (L to R) Coney Island, Sawtooth, and Red Deer.



The last little tidbit of information regards the Jeep Rubicon. Since our nephew has about another year and a half on his employment for the Air Force overseas, he wants me to have his Jeep to use, sort of like keeping it to "exercise" it on occasion and maintain it for him. Believe me, I don't think there is any way I am going to take roads like we took on this trip.



(I'll also post this last photo and a couple more over on the "Jeeps" thread.)

All in all, it was a great camping trip, although I wish it could have been a bit longer. However, if it had been a bit longer, I'd have had to done some "bathing" in that clear and cold stream.

 

[dennishoddy]

Beautiful pics!

I'll be in that area before the end of the year.

 

[TerryMiller]

Thanks, Dennis.

I should "clarify" one statement that I made in that posting. When I said "primitive" campsite, my idea of primitive camping is one where the sites are developed but have no "hook-ups." Camp Dick does have 3 "vault toilets" and there are 4 water spigots scattered around. In our case, one of the vault toilets and one of the water spigots was right next to our campsite.

We didn't do quite enough research though, because the site chosen barely had room for the two tents, and one of them was close to both the fire pit and the barbeque stand, so neither of those could be used. About all of our cooking was done on the nephew's "camp kitchen" except for one meal cooked at a neighboring site with those neighbors. However, we have now scouted out the better sites where two large tents can be pitched without having issues with the fire pit and barbeque stand.

 

[Okie4570]

Great pics, thanks for sharing!

 

[Boatman]

My Brother and Sister In Law just moved here. This read is very timely. Thanks

 

[TerryMiller]

OK. I've officially become a backslider, both from a Christian viewpoint and that of a photographer. Allow me to explain.

A commonly known city park in Colorado Springs is Garden of the Gods, with some huge rock formations. A lesser known city park in Colorado Springs is one called Red Rock Canyon Open Space. It also has rock formations, although not as large nor as impressive in their beauty. However, while the wife was with her sister sewing, I took the opportunity to go to Red Rock Canyon Open Space to take some pictures in there and to test out some issues with one of my cameras.

While the park was nice enough, I found myself distracted by others in the park. For instance, there is a pond there with signs stating no swimming. There are also rules stating that without the proper equipment and a permit, one is not supposed to climb up any rock formations more than 10 feet from the base. There was a group of boys, with an adult supervisor no less, that was ignoring the signs about swimming. There were also some folks there that were climbing higher than 10 feet and without climbing gear, so I have to presume that they also didn't have permits.

Anyway, this post is to show a few shots of the park, but it also shows some of the distractions that took my mind off of photographing nature.

Nature:



Distraction on one of the many trails at the park, something which I will need to explore a bit more when I get more acclimated to the altitude:







Beauty:



Distraction:



Beauty:





Distraction:



Beauty:



Distraction:



Many more days like that, and OSA members are likely to start comparing me to Spata.