Notes To My Mother

There are many places to find fall color and one very special such place is the Smoky Mountains National Park.  It is the most visited national park and I would guess the bulk of the visitors come during fall color.  When you are driving the Blue Ridge Parkway and the traffic comes to a stop you can be sure there is an excellent viewing location just ahead of you.  The waterfall in this picture is Looking Glass Falls and it is viewable from the road, but absolutely worth getting out of the car to really experience it. It is not often that you find a good waterfall with fall colors surrounding it like this. In another part of the park is an area called Tremont.  It is a gold mine of scenes like the one above with cascading creeks deep in the forest.  A wonderful place to spend contemplative time, alone with nature. Sunrises are special in the Blue Ridge Mountains with the lingering ground mist, gorgeous skies and the awakening of the forest beauty.  One of t...

  Dallas Creek Road I have not spent enough time in Colorado.  It has such amazing beauty.  The one place I did spend some time was in the San Juan Mountains.  I was there about 10 days, first with a group of photographers and then with my wife, Jan.  The scene above is on Dallas Creek Road.  I had been there a few days earlier with the group of photographers but the sky was boring and the snow was missing.  One morning, after the photographers had left Jan and I were staying in Ouray.  It snowed! I was up before dawn and headed for this location.  In the dark I missed the turn off and did a bit of frantic wandering until I finally found the road.  I knew this location with fall color, snow on the mountains and a dramatic cloudy sky could be an exceptional scene to photograph.  That is Mt Sneffles in the background and Dallas Creek in the foreground right.     This is a closer look at the scene on the left of the prev...