September 19-21, 2016

High 70’s, sunny, blue skies. The trees are pretty close to peaking with fall colors. Beautiful.

Silver Queen Campground-looking more like golden queen, across the street is one of the 3 campgrounds we are hosts at. We hiked 3.5 miles up East Maroon Creek and back today. Some elk hunters passed us on the trail. It is bow hunting season now.

It was such a nice day there were lots of people on the trail that usually has no one. But once we passed the cut off for Maroon Lake it was mostly just us. Looking up West Maroon Valley with the bells at the end. Red and yellow foliage underneath the golden aspen.

Spectacular trees and blue sky. John supervising the trees while I take photos.

Suep looking up at the aspens-photo by John. They shimmer and glow in the sunshine. John took this of me with these HUGE aspen trees.

John on the trail back looking down Maroon Valley. John is  a tiny dot on the trail in these trees.

The big fishing hole has lovely reflections. We talked to some guests tonight, the wife had caught 4 fish here and he painted this scene. We arrived back at our campsite to find this fifth wheel with Ron and Louise camped in front of us. They claim to be friends of our boss  and are staying for 10 days. They said ‘ Didn’t they tell you we were coming?”  NO. John is going to talk to her  tomorrow.  Kind of ruins our ambiance, but  they are really nice people. It ended up they  had some miscommunications and were supposed to camp elsewhere and moved the next day.  Our ambiance is back.

Seed head, clover blossom, tiny green worm, knap weed seed heads, a big green cricket , snow berries. Second photo a dead butterfly, red grass, golden aspen leaves, the trail is yellow with them.

I was sitting in our site, looked up and the doe and two fawns that live in this area were watching me. They must be used to us, they don’t seem afraid of us. John and Mandy are visiting again in their A-liner trailer. It is always fun to see them. It was cooler and it  rained today.

We hiked back up East Maroon trail with them. Rain coming down the valley at us. A fir tree decorated like a Christmas tree with the fallen golden aspen leaves.

John and I in our matching rain coats. I have a green one so we won’t match, but it is too small to fit over me and my pack so John gave me an old one of his that is bigger. We hiked farther up East Maroon Valley, this is a panorama of where we turned around. Spectacular colors, steep glacial carved canyon.

A small water fall by the trail and I got a shot of the moment the sun came out for a few minutes.