Golden Colorado -- a Photo Essay

(First attempt at a photo essay so bear with me... ;) ) 

I'm calling it Golden Colorado for several reasons... first, I LOVE Denver, Colorado and the mountains.  LOVE it.  As soon as I step off the plane, the air feels different, the open land calls to me, the mountains beg for me to come and see, to be outdoors.  Nothing about Houston is majestic (except our amount of concrete), and I'm certainly NOT motivated to get outdoors in the humidity and mosquitos!

We also spent the first night of our trip in the town called Golden, Colorado.  I picked it, because it was near Red Rocks Park (here are some great views of that), and it's a nice, small town with a lot of history.  It's named after a man named Mr. Golden, but it was made more famous by the Coors brewery headquarters.  :)  Colorado is beer country, I think.

So, Red Rocks Park is an amazing place -- the start of our sight-seeing.  It's a natural amphitheatre, created by red sandstone rocks which were tilted up out of the ground in a great mountain-building event... part of the events that created the Rocky Mountains.

Here's a picture of a model, and then the amphitheatre itself looking down at the stage.  All the great names have played here -- and they have a list of artists dating back to, I believe, 1905.

From Red Rocks, we took a scenic tour up to Estes Park, Colorado through the foothills... and I mean VERY scenic, ending up climbing a narrow, unpaved road to Central City...

 Lots of remnants of old mining operations to be found all over this area.

We made it to Rocky Mountain National Park the next day... here is a "golden" flower... I should probably look up the real name of it... but the name doesn't matter so much.

It's elk season right now, so we got to see a herd at the park first thing.

We took yet another SCENIC road, called Old Falls Road, through the park.  It took about 2 hours to drive 9 miles on the winding narrow road... of course, we had to stop occasionally for sights like this.  Chasm Falls.

When we reached the top, we were at 11,800 feet -- above the tree line.  It was 51 degrees and windy.  We learned about the "Alpine Tundra."  Each continent on earth has a tundra... it's called "Alpine" tundra when the cold, harsh conditions are due to extreme elevation.  Polar or "Arctic" tundra is due to being very far North (or, I guess, South, too).

 Tundra vistas.  And I believe there's a big-horn sheep or two in the picture, along with pockets of snow/ice.

Finally, my trip to Colorado earned the title of "golden" due to the gold leaves on the Aspens.  Simply breath-taking.  Here's my favorite picture:

 And a few more...(I had way too many to share them all)

I hope you've enjoyed the trip with me!  It was a great 10th wedding anniversary!

Ignore the time-stamp on the pictures... I'm not sure why they are saying August, when we just went this weekend.  I've decided I need to come up with a reason to go to Denver every September to see the mountains.  And the golden Aspens...

(Please check out my Second Round romance entry, comments welcome, 10s even better: Beauty and the Geek – Ch 2 )