Wild about wildflowers

Today J, Scooter and I took another trip up Gold Camp Road just to find a stream and chill for a while. We ended up at Rosemont Reservoir, which is the water supply for the city of Colorado Springs. It's high in the mountains and was also a perfect spot to photograph wildflowers. Colorado's wildflowers peak in mid-July but because we've had so much moisture, they are already poking up in full force.

The pink wildflower with the stream running behind it is the Pretty Shootingstar, and the purple cluster next to the aspen tree is the Colorado State flower, the Columbine. I also experiemented with the "color swap" special effect on my new camera to get the cool sepia/color photo. Neat, huh?

Tomorrow we are going to drive to Buena Vista and take Cottonwood Pass over the Continental Divide to hunt for more wildflowers and photo opps. We will come out in Gunnison and make the loop home through Canon City. Cottonwood Pass is a magnificient route and will be an all-day road trip; but the views are worth it. It is a tradition, for some odd reason, that we play a combination of Steve Wiseman and Native American music while going over the Pass. I'm looking forward to it. It's a trip we've made a number of times, but this will be the first in at least two years.

We are anxious to take our first camping trip of the season as well. A broken tent pole has kept us home; and we need to simply replace it or fix it, but we seem to find other things to do when the time rolls around, so it has remained unfixed. The snow has mostly melted from the top peaks, so it is finally camping weather...and offroading weather! We are ready to hit the trails and get away from civilization. And photograph more wildflowers :)