Autumn 2013: Was four days enough?

When was the first day of Autumn again?

Last Sunday, wasn't it?

And when is the first day of Winter supposed to be?

Sometime in late December if I recall correctly.

Ah shucks.

What does the calendar know?

Wednesday I got wind of the fact that it was snowing up at Solitude.

I looked at the skies and decided I needed to go check out that report first hand.

I drove up Big Cottonwood canyon, rain spritzing my windshield as I wound through the canyon.

And then...

The rain turned white.

Snow!

Only a few of the aspens had changed...it is, after all, still early autumn.

The early bird colored bits looked glorious in against the white.

Misty, foggy snow...

Everything looked slightly surreal.

How is it that snow so magical that it can make even dead trees look artistic?

I took very few photos as I was reluctant to pull over in the foggy low visibility snow.

I turned on my emergency lights when I did pull over for extra safety.

Wish I had remembered to turn them off when I got home.

Thursday I spent car-less; my three year old car battery went dead over night.

It took until Friday for the local car shop to come bring me a new battery, since I was flying solo this week and Bernie had our other car parked at the airport.

(Isn't that the way it always seems to go when husbands go out of town AND leave you with just one car?)

Friday (today!) I got a big pot of baked potato soup going in the crock pot.

(Earlier  in the week I had made two gallons of turkey soup...crisp fall weather just makes me want to make soup!)

Got all caught up on my "to do" list.

Watched the mountains tops get covered with fog, then watched as they showed themselves again dusted with snow.

Wonder if Millcreek, my "walking distance" canyon was getting snow.

As soon as my new battery was installed I grabbed my camera and drove over to Millcreek to see what was going on.

The first half of the 8 mile long canyon had moderate amounts of color.

Enough to make me get clicking away.

Porter Forks colliding rivers was being nicely framed with colorful leaves.

(Someday...soon...I will be renting a wide angle lens so I can finally take a full shot of this lovely spot.  It will be well worth it to pay $25 for a day's worth of wide angle pictures of my favorite scenes.  It will be a test drive: I am pretty sure I want to own one, but the purchase price sticker shock is enough to make me want to test before cutting a check.)

Millcreek in autumn is so outstanding.

Some fine day I really ought to walk the whole 8 miles so I can photograph every bit of it.

Right above this scene....

Snow had fallen on the high peaks.

Where I stood it was getting light rain, which is just lovely to bring out the color of fall leaves.

When I looked up, it looked like fall was fleeing from winter,

Three season scenes:

The deep greens of summer

The multi colors of autumn

The white of winter.

All in one view.

Fall comes down from the mountain.

In this case, I think fall was doing a line dance

Or playing a round of follow the leader!

I really like this shot...autumn dancing down the  hillside.

Across from the line dance, the rain fell on me, with occasional bit of slush hitting me.

The polka dotted leaves: speckled, freckled fun.

I drove on...until the rain dotting my windshield turned to mush.

At the very top of Millcreek snow was covering the ground.

The funny thing about this scene is that each year I run up the canyon to see if the aspen has changed yet.

I swear the trees change  and drop their leaves in one day...the day that I miss coming.

This year I caught the colors on the trees, but the colors are covered with snow.

That's pretty nice too.

Do you see a circle dance in the mountain side aspen groves?

I do.... 

At the very top of the canyon there is a parking lot.

From the lot one can access several trailheads.

The getting the split rail fence into a photo without cars is tricky.

I can't blame folks for wanting to park where they can sit and stare at the woods.

For a moment I had a clear shot without cars. As I positioned myself for the perfect shot, a woman wheeled her car into the center of the shot.

There were plenty of other places to park, so I went up and asked if she would mind backing up into another parking place.

She totally understood and was happy to oblige.

 

Last week I spent many hours going through all my digital autumn related photographs.

After selecting 890 of them (the "best of the best"!) I created a chip to use on our large digital photo frame.

It is so nice to have one of the beautiful autumn scenes I have enjoyed over the past eight years slipping onto the screen every five seconds.

We've connected the chip with our large television screen too.

Seeing the scenes in 24" by 36" sizes is amazing.

It took a long time to create the chip; happily I can add to it with some of these pictures too.

Eventually I want to do a "Winter Scene" chip, a "Christmas Season" chip, a "Vacations" chip, a "Flowers and Plants" chip, a "Fishing Trip" chip (for Bernie) and a "Family" chip...a whole library of chips are planned.

I am glad chips are so inexpensive now that such a plan is reasonable.

With the way Autumn makes me want to take so many pictures, it isn't out of the question to think that there eventually will be an Autumn vol. 1 and vol. 2 chips.

Can't ever get enough of autumn!