Welcome to Colorful Colorado

Saturday dawned clear and bright. The pied piper skies beckoned us toward the great outdoors and without a second thought we loaded up in the car and headed out. We didn't have far to drive (just thirty minutes!) before we were in sight of vistas that are quite breathtaking (but then many are!)

The peaks in the distance are snow-capped but the temperatures break records. A winter with little snow leaves this semi-arid climate mostly brown when it should be greening in abundance. Fire danger is already high and a careless cigarette could result in evacuation.

I gaze out at the Flatirons, amazed at the wedge shaped features behind me. Their sharp angles in contrast to the mountains beyond. They earn their name from pioneer women who felt they resembled an upended household flatiron. (the likeness more obvious when viewed farther north in central Boulder- like in this picture)

 Consisting of a similar rock (conglomerate sandstone) as the aforementioned Red Rocks amphitheater, the uplifted earth reveals stories that are nearly 300 million years in the making: the dinosaurs that roamed here, the sealife that hatched. Tales that are written in stone and will endure longer than the humans that would come along to read the biography.

  It was a busy day on the trail- the trail abuzz with conversation and bicyclists straining. The first really warm spring day awakens the hibernating Coloradans from the winter doldrums in a wave of outdoor frenzy. And warm it was, shattering the previous high temperature by 6 degrees, topping out at 84!

click on the picture to get the effect of this panorama 

But in true Colorado fashion, the weather did an about-face as swiftly as a marching band. The next day there were snowflakes fluttering to the ground! Much needed moisture but a change so dramatic that one might be excused for fearing they'd been transported to another planet.
But that is what makes Colorado so colorful- not the green landscape as they might try to advertise- (it remains brown for most of the year except for the spring and only then if we've had enough snow) but the weather.