Saturday, August 25, 2007

More moon flowers and Engineer Pass



These are some shots I took on our recent drive over Engineer pass. The pass is a 4 wheel drive road that goes from Lake City, Colorado, to Ouray or Silverton, Colorado, depending on which fork you take near the end. It goes up to 12,000 feet in elevation, into the tundra of the Rockies. We saw a black bear while on the drive, though he wasn't black, he was what my husband calls a "cinnamon" bear. I thought he was more honey colored. He definitely didn't blend in well with the bushes; the sun on his coat really made him stand out.


And I just thought I'd show you how moon flowers reproduce themselves so prolificly. The spiky little balls are the seed pods, which, when dry, will curl open and drop seeds all over. They are less lethal than they look at this point; the spikes are fairly soft, but once they're dried, they stick like velcro.

1 comment:

Susan said...

That looks like a back road up to Silverton. We took the main road from Durango once, and also from the other end, from Dolores, but didn't take any back roads. I guess we won't go camping up there with the bear. =) I don't even want to think about taking the 5-er up those steep, winding roads anyway, not that high up.