October is here ... and winter!

The week is catching up with us. Or is it getting ahead of us?

Whatever. We did two days of touring the San Juan Skyway to catch photos of autumn foliage. Today we tried to catch up with the photos and the afternoon was spent going to three receptions ... Veryl Goodnight's in connection with Durango's Cowboy Poetry weekend, the beautiful new safehouse sponsored by Renew and the reception for the juried art show at the Cortez Cultural Center.

Anyway, Wednesday was a weird day of playing tag with the light. It was overcast, with shifting openings in the clouds that spotlighted patches of the landscape with bright sunshine ... ever moving, never predictable!

We don't have the range of colors out here that the eastern woodlands have, but I love it when an aspen tree that normally takes a back seat to the darker conifer suddenly breaks into a blaze of color!

Further up US 550, the whole hillside was interspersed with gold leaves and grey rock. At the falls where Climax Creek goes under the highway, the effect was beautiful, but the winds were gale-force.

The slopes above Ouray, where we spend the night, were gilded ... below the cliffs of grey rock.

Thursday morning we went to the Box Canyon Falls Park, after a pleasant breakfast at the Backstreet Bagel and Deli (where the first rays of the morning sun came in the front windows at exactly 9 a.m.). I've posted a shot from inside the canyon looking out; the sun hadn't penetrated the innards of the box canyon.

The horse is in a pasture of the Double RL ranch (Ralph Lauren's, I think) along the west fork of Dallas Creek. The Sneffels Range is in the distance, looking brighter and clearer (and cleaner, after this spring's dust storms) than I've seen for a long time. The next view is up the same drainage toward the Sneffels and they are also reflected in one of the Alta Lakes.

The top picture is looking up the San Miguel River valley towards Lizard Head. The shadows were starting to get long! The trip around the Skyway is probably only about 300 miles, but we could easily spend three days covering it. tv