It seems like we do our best travels when the leaves are turning color. For example, this year we managed two trips back-to-back for some fall colors in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. After seeing the La Sal Mountains in Utah from a distance last spring, I wanted a chance to
see them dressed in their fall colors too. Our second trip was along the Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic Byway with a side trip onto the Uncompahgre Plateau, as mentioned in my previous post; in that one, I didn't include any photos I took along Divide Road at the top
of the plateau, so there will be some here.
Fall colors in Colorado trend mainly toward the bright yellow and, occasionally, orange aspens. Because aspens are so common, photographing them sometimes feels too cliche to me, so I try to keep on the lookout for the less-photographed Gambel oaks, mountain ninebark, narrow-leaf cottonwoods, willows, rabbitbrush (which blooms in the fall), as well as others.
With the goal of seeing whether there are differences between fall colors in Colorado and eastern Utah, we headed west. The La Sal Mountains are a tiny range of several peaks in three clusters extending only 15 miles north-to-south and six miles east-to-west just east of Canyonlands National Park and Moab, Utah. From the photography standpoint, it was frustrating that there wasn't any snow yet, but it had also been dry enough that the leaves were already falling so we were glad to see as much color as we did.
Two things stood out to me during our jaunt around the La Sals -- the thick stands of Gambel
oak on the lower slopes, and the absolutely enormous aspens higher up. In fact, the Gambel oak was so thick near the roads that it was hard to see any color on the mountainsides unless we were far back, or at a much higher elevation. As a bonus, the oaks' colors were ranging from green to yellow, through to the rich rusty-bronze I love so much. At higher elevations, the aspens took over, and these were much broader in diameter and taller than most I've seen recently in Colorado (I'll write more about trees for next month's post).
Because the La Sals are next to Moab, the desert landscape can't be ignored. Our first drive into the mountains gave us early morning views of some of the dramatic rock formations, such as the double structure of Castleton Tower and the Priest and Nuns (also known as The Rectory), seen at right as viewed from the foothills of Mt. Waas and La Sal Peak. And there is Parriott Mesa (one corner of the mesa is seen below, viewed from Castleton Road) topped by sheer
400-foot cliffs. Both formations are popular with rock climbers, photographers and film-makers; Castleton Tower's spire has been seen in multiple movies, used for at least one car commercial, and is one of the most-climbed formations near Moab.
After a couple days of exploration, we drove north past Vernal, Utah, and on to Wyoming along the Flaming Gorge Scenic Byway. This reservoir on the Green River straddles the
Utah-Wyoming border and extends about 90 miles from the dam; it's an important part of the water supply for the western US as well as being a popular recreation area. Because the area is mainly pinyon-juniper woodland, nearly the only fall colors we saw in this stretch of the trip were the bright yellow blooms of rabbitbrush. I was especially impressed by the pretty steel
bridge over Cart Creek near the dam, which could be seen for miles along Highway 191.
Traveling farther north, we stopped at a town my husband had been curious about for some years, Pinedale; it's at the foot of the Wind River Range and south of Grand Teton National Park. The base of the mountains is home to half a dozen lakes and reservoirs, with hundreds of tiny lakes at high altitudes. This range contains 19 of the 20 highest peaks in Wyoming (in spite of its prominence,
Grand Teton in the nearby Teton Range is only the second-highest peak in the state). We camped by Fremont Lake just outside town; this gave us a good starting place to drive up to a couple of the jumping-off points for hikers, horseback trekkers, hunters, and others who head into the rugged backcountry of these mountains.
The Winds, as they are often called locally, are extremely rugged; even on Google Maps it's hard to find any roads that extend more than a few miles toward the mountains. There are no highways that directly cross the range, although I'd like to camp in the vicinity and circumnavigate the range at least once. The area promises considerable additional photo opportunities!
At the end of our too-brief stay in the area, we bypassed Grand Teton National Park, only glimpsing Grand Teton from the Idaho side. And even the glimpses we got were difficult due
to smoke from Idaho wildfires. I had to enhance this image quite a lot to bring out the mountains from the smoke haze. And between the smoke and needing to get to our destination in Montana, we didn't spend any time in the section of Yellowstone National Park that we traversed.
Our next short trip, which took us to the Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic Byway in
Colorado, also provided some fall colors as well as interesting views from the top of the
Uncompahgre Plateau down into the canyons of the area. Driving Divide Road at the top of the plateau, we were pleasantly surprised to find that we were able to see the entire length of Grand Mesa. That's quite difficult from many viewpoints because Grand Mesa is really big! It's
about 40 miles long and rises 6,000 feet above the valley floor, to an altitude of 11,000 feet. As the largest flat-topped mountain on earth, the top of Grand Mesa covers about 500 square miles! The Uncompahgre Plateau itself is no slouch in the size department. Divide Road wends its way over 60 miles from its northern terminus at Highway 141 (the Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic Byway) southeasterly to its other end at Highway 62 not far from
Telluride in the San Juan Range. Besides containing much of the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area (NCA), you can find ranching and mining, both historic and current, and National Forest recreation opportunities. The top of the plateau also includes low-key old-growth forest; we saw a marker for an unusually large pinyon pine, and a Ponderosa pine marked as 350 years old is found here (more about them in next month's post).
While most of the color up on this high plateau is from the Gambel oaks, I'm always intrigued by the numbers of colors and tones that are found on these semi-arid landscapes. From greenish-gray to gray to blue-violet sagebrush; tawny grasses; green, yellow, red, orange and bronze trees and shrubs; differing blues of water and sky; to the tan, red, orange, blue-green, and even purplish rocks, Colorado really does live up to the nickname found on the state's highway welcome signs, Colorful Colorado.
Considering the vast numbers of canyons in this state, I've sometimes wondered if it should have been named in some way that referenced them (although "Canona" isn't nearly as
catchy as "Colorado," and would require people to learn how to add the tilde mark over the first "n"!). An example of the canyons to be found includes this very sheer, narrow canyon cut by La Fair Creek, a tributary of Big Dominguez Creek and Dominguez Canyon. This view is found just outside the Dominguez-Escalante NCA in the Uncompahgre National Forest. We discovered plenty of elk sign at the top of the cliffs, although since it was hunting season, we didn't see any wildlife.
This post kept growing and growing, finally becoming one considerably longer than usual. Maybe it was the backlog of photos to share, or that it was our last two camping adventures for the season. The teardrop is now put away for the winter, but we plan more photo tours next year; we just haven't decided where yet. Stay tuned!
And as always, I invite you to review the other pages of my website for new content and for photo art that will fit your home or office decor. #artphotography #naturephotography #photoart #travel #photodecor #coloradophotographer #teardropcamping #homedecor
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