Take A Nature Walk With Me!

Last weekend I was on a qwest - a qwest for columbines, Colorado's state flower! They can be hard to find sometimes but when you find one, there are usually a lot more around!

Glenn left camp about 8:00 to go scouting so I grabbed my camera and started to hike (just along the road, mind you - I would never venture into the woods by myself because I would never find my way back out)

There were lots and lots of beautiful wildflowers!! I loved the purple ones the best - they seemed to be growing out of the rocks, reaching for that sunshine bearing down! Now I could go get my wildflower book and tell you the names of all of these but because I'm being lazy, you'll just have to enjoy the pictures!

The road ran right by the stream so it was fun to watch it curve and listen to the mini-waterfalls along the way!

And the butterflies - I wasn't fast enough to capture very many but this particular one landed right in the pine tree and I quickly snapped a picture of it -as you can see, it was quite large!

I always think of granddaughter Rayna when I see pink flowers because she LOVES the color pink! These are dainty flowers that grew best right along the stream!

There were lots of beaver dams along the way - also, lots of logs across the streams that you probably could have crossed over on but here again, no one was around to fish me out of the water!

Now these flowers I'm sure are weeds but aren't they pretty?

I couldn't resist taking picture after picture of the clear stream! The water here was about a foot deep.

We camped in a large narrow canyon and as you can see by the road, it was extremely rocky and rough - but it was beautiful so I put aside the fact that our rate of speed was about 2 miles an hour!

I loved this green type of grass - only when I showed it to Glenn, he informed me it was a weed - guess I'm attracted to them but these "weeds" made the neatest pattern on the ground!

And last but not least is this perfect little white flower that I'll call an orchid although I know that's not what it is - I just think it's amazing it grows all by itself and is such a simple, pretty plant!

So did I find the elusive columbine? Not on this trip! But I will - just get me to the mountains for one more camping trip!!