Preparing for a Trip and The First Photos - Fall Leaves Tour- Part One

 First things first, grab a cup of tea. This post has a lot of photos to enjoy...

This time I remembered to take both of my lenses.

Water, electrolytes, and hot tea for the trip. 

For our meals on the road, I prepared potato salad,

coleslaw,

fried Turkey Spam marinated in Liquid
Smoke and black pepper for sandwich meat,

Honey wheat bread and

Oatmeal breakfast bars.

The ice chest lid made a nice table.

This hitch was not kind to my shins. I learned quickly
not to ignore it's presence. 

We brought all the accoutrements like smoked cheddar cheese,
onions, lettuce and tomatoes. This made a fine meal. 

This was our first stop for breakfast/lunch.

Someone left their vest at the trailhead and some kind
soul hung it up for the to find on their return.

We were surrounded by beauty and very high mountains.

There were so many cows on the western slope heading down
lower for greener pastures.

Narrow roads

I cleaned my windshield, but after hours driving it's
dirty again.

Ptarmigan! There were actually two, but I had the sun on the
camera and my sunglasses on so after many snaps I only
ended up with one picture. 

Mama

Fawn

Twins

Cliff

All of these pictures except for a few were taken 
by my passenger, Number One Husband. Pulling
over was not an option. Some spots were one lane
only and there were other cars.

Sheer cliffs, no guardrails.

We are headed home back up the pass and ran into even more cows.
This very large heard of cows were moving to lower pastures for the
winter months just below the continental divide on Cottonwood Pass.
They went on for miles and miles.

4 Point

These pictures were mostly taken through the windshield and did not show the vibrant colors. Number One Husband was unable to do any hiking at all, so we mainly stayed on the road. I did take a very short and steep hike down to a pond at the top of the pass by myself, but that was all the hiking that I was able to do. I have more pictures taken from my camera when we were able to pull over and take in the extraordinary views. I will post the rest of the pictures in part two.

Mrs. Smith