Last Friday night Pat, Nick, Ellie and I went country swing dancing at the Eagles Club in downtown Bozeman. The next morning I left town, headed for Colorado.
Aspen leaves glowed bright along the Gallatin River as I drove south. In the Salt Lake Valley, scrub oaks turned the hillsides of the Wasatch burnt orange.
I stopped on Utah Route 6, on the pass at Soldier Summit. I’ve always liked that place. It marks such an obvious transition between the mountains and the Southern Utah desert. There, yellow sage flowers and orange aspens lit up gentle slopes along the road.
Outside of Crawford, Colorado, near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, cattails and cottonwoods lent brown, yellow and fading green to Smith Fork Creek. Down in the belly of the Black, along the swirling Gunnison River, poison ivy leaves were aflame in red and orange.
Images from Soldier Summit, Utah; Colorado National Monument; Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and McClure Pass, Colorado:
Left on Land 