A landscape photographer's tour

Keith's travels in the Colorado Rockies - September-October 2008

To Estes Park

Travelling from Denver to Estes Park, the entrance to the Rocky Mountains National Park.

This photo-diary covers a driving tour around the Colorado Rockies in the Fall (September/October 2008). Although my third visit to the state, it's actually the first time I've been in Colorado at this time of the year. A good year for the Fall colours. There are also photo-journals on this site covering a 2006 trip to Colorado and two to the Pacific coast.. There are lots of excellent photo books by people who've had a bit more time to look round than I have, such as this one by John Fielder... (lots of places I didn't get to).

Since I'm not on my own, it's a bit more of a road trip and not quite so heavily phototgraphy oriented as before ;-) That said, I'm getting some excellent photos and look forward to creating some great new prints, black and white as well as colour.

Colorado is a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip round the state to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.

	Daily pages 27th Sept.: to Denver 28th Sept.: Estes Park 29th Sept.: Rocky Mountain National Park 30th Sept.: Grand lake to Steamboat Springs 1st Oct: Steamboat Lake 2nd Oct: Steamboat to Leadville 3rd Oct: Leadville to Aspen 4th Oct: Aspen and Castle Creek 5th Oct: Aspen to Ouray 6th Oct: Telluride
What's the weather like? National Weather Service radar Geological maps Webcams What are the roads like? (CO)	7th Oct: Durango via Silverton 8th Oct: Durango to Gunnison 9th Oct: Ohio Pass 10th Oct: Gunnison to Salida 11th Oct: Salida to Frisco 12th Oct: Loveland Pass 13th Oct: Via Mt Evans (almost) 14th Oct: Flying home

A reasonable night's rest, although it usually takes a day or so for me to adjust my internal clock and not to feel like getting up at 3am :-)

First of all, here's the GX200 I'm trying out. Its base ISO setting is 64, so I'm hoping that those extra megapixels are not going to require so much noise reduction to lose detail. I'm going to try making some large prints when I get back, so we'll see...

This is what it's up against. A Canon 1Ds3 with 14, 15, 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200 lenses.

Oh, and the 24mm tilt/shift lens too.

Why so many lenses? - well, it's the first time I've used the 21MP 1Ds3 over here and I wanted to do a few experiments and see what worked well.

It's quite a pleasant journey through the mountains to get to Estes Park from Denver (Hwy. 36)

Two entrances to the Rocky Mountain National Park are just to the west of Estes Park, so I'm planning to cross the park tomorrow.

Its the first time I've seen the mountains in the distance below, not draped with snow, since I've only previously been here in April.

One of the things I'm hoping to catch is a bit of Autumn colour (aka 'Fall Colors' )

There are not so many aspen trees this side of the mountains (more in a few days hopefully), but the shot below gives an idea of what I'd like to see.

It turns out that the best looking tree I saw today was in the town itself

It also turned out to be extremely busy, with crowds of people everywhere, and huge great queues of traffic building up after lunch, all making their way to the park (should be less busy tomorrow)

Notice all the people standing, dutifully waiting the light to change. In the UK, pedestrian lights are treated as more advisory, and I've seen American visitors to the UK standing at the roadside, looking slightly confused as we just walk over the road, ignoring the signs :-)

From watching a bit of US TV last night, both Karen and I were struck by how many more adverts were mentioning 'green' or 'eco' issues.

What has happened? Have rising gas prices finally hit home?

Fortunately, still plenty of my favourite 'worst view in the rear mirror' vehicles about.

Yes, my favourite ugly US vehicle - created for the terminally devoid of good taste :-)

Meanwhile, time to visit a Safeway and stock up on a few essentials, such as tea bags and some fruit.

Pictured below, Karen, trying to ignore all the vast sacks of snacks behind her.

You really can buy all kinds of useful stuff in Estes park.

An entire store devoted to 'mountain style' for example.

I saw this lamp in their window and immediately thought how much my friend Al would like it (he lives over here now and I haven't seen his latest house, so I expect he's got lots of stuff like this already ;-)

An entire store devoted to scissors

and another one where you can get crosses, jewellery -and- snacks

Note that the shop itself is for sale too...

There is also that slightly bizarre passtime of scrapbooking ...no-one has managed to explain to me what it's all about, or even more why anyone would want to do it in the first place.

But seriously, we did have a very nice day in the area ;-)

Tomorrow it's up into the mountains.

>> Next Day >> Across the Rocky Mountain National Park to Grand Lake

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