Back to Telluride

Having given up on making it around the ridge because of the "road conditions" on Last Dollar Rd, I turned around and headed back to Telluride, or at least to the Telluride highway. From a photographer's point of view, there's a lot to be said for retracing your footsteps - or your tire tracks in this case. You drive till something catches your attention and you can find a place to pull over. You get out, shoot whatever it was that caught your eye then, if you're smart, you look all around for anything else of interest - click, click, click. But you still miss an awful lot, surveying only what's in front of you during the time you're driving. By going back the way you came, you get another chance at all that real estate. . .

I'm not quite sure what it is about the picture above - maybe the orange stakes - but I like it.

Recognize these mountains? Yeah, me too. But I missed this composition the first time, probably thinking about the barns I'd just passed. So, I stopped on the way back for the next picture, and found this nice, suitably rustic fence AND a bale of barbed wire.

Here's one of the barns I mentioned - the others are up the slope a little bit. But I was thinking about a composition for a painting, and wanted to get close enough for some detail. What do you think, Stephen?

Alright. Back out to the highway; down the road several miles alongside the San Miguel River and hook a right on Colorado Hwy 62 out of the valley - or at least out of this valley.

This is a view looking east on the road to Ridgeway. Coincidentally, it was taken from the intersection of Last Dollar Rd and CO 62 - where I would have joined the highway if Last Dollar had been passable. The sky kept getting more and more interesting throughout the afternoon.

This was taken at the same stop, but looks southeast. Nice scenery, a good sky - it gave me a sense of the winds aloft and reminded me for awhile how much fun flying used to be. I never flew up here, but I'll bet it would have been great.