The Big Male Bears of Autumn in Action

Bear activity is waning fast in our neck of the woods. A few big male bears still wander the trails. They are no longer consistently marking trees. This guy is very close to one on his left side in this photo - it's the spindly one that appears to be rising out of his left hip. He didn't even turn his head.

Based on the bears' girths, I can tell that they've had a good eating year! Again, this guy is passing a marking tree on his left hip. This guy looked magnificent as he passed a marking tree with nary a glance toward it.

Interestingly, two bears in a row did take an interest in that marking tree. On the evening of 9/19...

And in the morning of 9/20...

Neither marked it. They just sniffed.

In fact, the last time that tree was marked was on 8/4/17. It was marked only once this season although most bears who passed it did sniff it.

As you can see, the one bear who marked it was very emphatic!

By September, bears seem like they don't have the energy for marking trees willy nilly. However, a couple of bears did, including this one. I believe that this bear is Tiny, who has grown his winter coat and is no longer limping at all. He looks to me as if he'll be back next mating season, assuming that he doesn't get in trouble with humans this fall.

In the past, Tiny has still been out and walking around in early December. He goes to his den late, which means that he will be continuing to try to find food even when most natural foods are finished.

I have a video from trail cameras that are pointed at bear marking trees so that you can see the activity that we've had in December. It ranges from Tiny doing emphatic marking dances to a bear who couldn't be bothered to stand up while he sniffed a tree. That sleepy bear was probably heading toward a den.

You can watch the video here or at Youtube.

Thanks for watching!

Black Dog Sunday

Our Black Dog has a significant birthday coming up. He's turning double digits.

Based on his gallivanting in the mountains, you'd never guess it.

He's one of the happiest and most exuberant dogs who I know.

We will be celebrating by doing something very fun with him!

Swimming Saturday

Those were the days, my friend. I thought that they'd never end... the ones when the dogs could play in the water every single day!

Both dogs love to get "big air" when they dive into a lake but R is the maestro at it!

It almost seems as if he's trying to fly.

My biggest challenge in photographing him was not letting him leap up and out of my frame! Look at that air!

Shyla's leaping style is much flatter and probably faster

And when she does get some air, she has a distinctive landing style!

I'm sad that swimming is over for this year but there's plenty of winter fun ahead!

Autumn Flowers with some in Aerial View

Just before our recent snow, I found a flower blooming among the golden aspen leaves. It was a wild clover with a beautiful magenta color.

The majority of our recent flowers have been the golden aspen leaves.

Alas, many of our leaves have fallen to the ground now. However, the day before a big wind event that brought down many leaves (and trees too!), I did an aerial view of a local aspen grove in brilliant gold. You can watch the video here or at Youtube.

P.S. Youtube has been marking many of my videos as "inappropriate for advertising". I think that that rating is an error but they won't review them unless I get a lot of views in a short period of time. I'd be really grateful if you could click on my video to play it and give it the thumbs up if you're over at Youtube (icon in lower right of video). I will be having a fair number of videos in the coming weeks so it would help me immensely if you could do that favor for me! Thank you.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

I know it's not "cool" to love John Denver's music but I do. He loved the Colorado mountains like I do. I knew, as soon as I first visited the Colorado mountains, that they were my home. It didn't matter where I'd lived before or where I'd grown up - the Colorado mountains stirred my soul.

Today is the anniversary of John Denver's untimely death.

I made a video of riding my mountain bike through golden groves of aspen, and I have John Denver's song as the background. I'd like to share that with you today. I hope that he'd approve of this use of his song (his foundation gets all the ad revenue from this video).

You can watch it here or at Youtube.

Wordless Wednesday - Golden world before the snow

From autumn to winter in a day

Sunday was a classic glorious autumn day in the Rockies. From the point of view of a tourist, we were past "peak leaf peeping". However, over the years, I've learned exactly which aspen groves keep their leaves the longest. I visited those on Sunday.

I pedaled joyfully on golden paths through the aspen groves that still had their leaves.

And Shyla ran through them with similar joy!

I've been negligent about bringing toys for her to fetch so she found a stick and invited me to play.

I could tell that it was one of those over-the-moon gorgeous days so I took a million photos. I'll save some for later. They make me smile!

I may have savored yesterday even more because I knew what was on the way. This was the sight out our window this morning. As a side note, that line of ten chairs is R's rehab tunnel - he crawls through them forward and backward SEVEN times daily. The Runner has shoveled them out so that R and I can resume his rehab soon. We need to wait for the ice on the deck to melt first!

I know that I'm not good at the autumn to winter transition because I tend to mourn the end of long warm mountain bike rides. The key thing is for me to get out in the snow and remember that it can be fun! Shyla loved it from our first instant outside!

The weather here can make such wild swings. Last week, I wore shorts and a sleeveless jersey to ride my bike, feeling the sunshine on my shoulders. Today, it was about 18°F, and I was bundled up like I was riding in the Arctic Circle.

If it's like other years, we have more warm autumn days ahead of us. This snow will melt, and we will, once again, marvel at the warmth of the sun.

There's no place that I'd rather be than in Crazy Colorado!

Moose and bears at two mountain ponds

A couple of ponds nearby have intrigued me for years because I wonder what kinds of wildlife visit them. Water sources are not common in our neck of the woods. By this time of year, most of the smaller ones have dried up.

Imagine my delight when the owners of the ponds said that they'd love to have me put wildlife cameras near them! As you can see from the photo below, there was some fun action at the ponds in late September.

There are two ponds, and it seems that different species use each one. The upper pond is favored by bears while the lower pond is favored by moose. We'll see if that trend continues over time.

I compiled a video of the visitors over the first 3 weeks of September. First, a flock of wild turkeys showed up. They drank from the pond but didn't go into it.

Then, our first bear arrived. He was curious about the trail cam, which makes me think that he's a regular there who noticed that something had changed. He started by examining the cam and fogging up the lens. He then headed into the pond for a swim. After he came out of the water, he rolled around on the grass, much like a dog would do!

Soon there was another bear visitor. It was easier to see this one as s/he swam. This is my first experience with bears actually swimming. Most of my observations have been of very shallow water sources.

Next, the moose came around at the second pond. The first view of them showed only two moose, both bulls. Then, it sounded like a freight train was approaching. It turned out to be a third moose who was galloping through the water!

Last but not least, I included a clip of a mother-calf moose pair in the water at night. I loved hearing the mother "talk" to the calf.

I hope that you enjoy the video either here or at Youtube.

Black Dog Sunday - Looking Regal

I don't know how well you feel that you know our black dog. Let me say a few words to help. He's turning 10 yrs old later this month yet we are routinely asked if he is a puppy. He is ecstatically enthusiastic about almost everything that we do with him.

As an example, I still do rehabilitation exercises with him for his elbow. When he realizes that the exercise routine is about to begin, he jumps up and down, does a few spins, and then barks while tossing his head upward in joy.

He throws himself into most of the exercises as if he hasn't already done about 500 days of exercises since his surgery. Except when I have a migraine, it is almost impossible not to get happy along with him.

He symbolizes a "Life is Good" attitude. It is very rare to see him look as serious as in this photo, which is why I like it so much.

His eyes show the depth of his spirit. If more people loved life like R does, the world would be a better place!

Last of the season - a long alpine mountain bike journey

Near the end of our summer trip, I had one last long mountain bike ride to do. You see, my spine really cannot handle riding in our LabMobile on rough 4WD roads. So, I did a long ride to meet the pack at a trailhead on a smooth road.

I am never leave this place easily. This was one last look backward before I left the the prominent mountain range near our campsite. I know how fragile life is so I always say a little wish that we will be back here again.

It was about a 40 minute climb until I crossed over a pass and entered a new mountain range with a wonderful singletrack path leading the way.

It was a glorious day, with no threat of storms the entire day. This was the view when I was partway up the climb to the highest point in the ride. I had prepared myself to be forced to push my bike up this very long and steep climb. I've done this route before, and I couldn't ride this climb. It was too steep.

Much to my surprise, I did pedal almost all of it! I trained harder this summer than I have in a long time, and it truly paid off. It made these high mountain rides into pure joy rather than heavy-legged slogs.

If you look closely in the next photo, you can see the thread of a trail that I'd climbed up starting in the left middle of the photo and then sinuously climbing up to where I was. I was at the top! The majority of the hard work of the ride was behind me.

As I descended, I ran into wildflowers, and you know that seeing them brings me to a standstill! An entire alpine meadow was filled with flowers. I really couldn't do it justice with my camera.

After relaxing with the wildflowers for a while, I headed further down. I saw a sight that is probably foreign to most of you. A big herd of sheep was spread out across the hillside and the trail.

There was no human with them. Rather, a sheep-guarding dog kept a close eye on them. When I first started through the herd, the dog got up and kept a close eye on me. I know that these dogs have a job that they understand very well - protect the sheep against any threats, and humans can fall into that category. So, I got off my bike and talked to the dog softly. He lay down and looked utterly relaxed.

I thought that the guard dog had dismissed any worries about me so I hopped on my bike to ride through the flock. Then, I glanced behind me, and the guard dog was right behind my back wheel. I took that as a sign to dismount and walk again. He seemed much happier with me walking so I made it through the herd peaceably.

I arrived at the trailhead with almost perfect timing. Our time in the southwest of Colorado was almost over. We stopped for ice cream in a nearby town, and then we drove partway home that day. We stopped to camp that night at a special place before driving the rest of the way home. More about that later.

Enjoy your weekend!

Alpine Flowers on Friday

While we were in the San Juan mountains of Colorado, I was so pleasantly surprised by the number of flowers still blooming.

Each day, I'd do a mountain bike ride from our campsite, often to another nearby mountain pass. Look at the golden flowers in the still green grass at an elevation of over 12,000'! This was near the end of the long and steep climb to get to the pass.

I arrived at the top ready for a rest and with time to enjoy the views in all directions.

My favorite view was back toward our campsite. I love the rock face that looks a bit like a layered cake!

I relaxed for a bit taking in the views before I started downhill. It was too windy at the top to stay there for long without getting cold.

My downhill ride took a long time as I stopped to enjoy flowers. I saw a COLUMBINE and one bud so they weren't done blooming yet. 

A wider view of the Columbines along with the other gorgeous wildflowers around them...

A crimson Indian Paintbrush reaching for the sky...

A daisy-like flower... I love the simple elegance of this flower. And I thought of a blogger friend of mine who particularly loves these when I took this photograph.

Then, I glimpsed an amazing purple and crimson combination.

I saw all of these flowers on the descent from that high mountain pass. It took me a long time to make it downhill as I kept noticing the exquisite flowers and stopping for photos.

Finally, the sky started looking heavy and worrisome in the direction of camp so I started riding fast to beat the rain.

I got caught in a hail storm after I had dropped below treeline. I spent about 5 minutes hiding under the canopy of a pine tree as hail bounced off the ground all around me. It's amazing how dry it is under a pine tree bough! The storm passed, and I happily cruised back to camp.

Another day in paradise... with incredible flowers!

Thankful Thursday - Our Mountain World

Our world is vacillating between autumn and winter. Thank goodness that the recent snow didn't bring down all the leaves.

I cannot believe that we sat outside at 11,500' elevation soaking up the sun in front of this incredible view less than a month ago. I can only imagine that our viewpoint is snow-covered now. The alpine summer is so short.

During that trip, we were on the road and camping for long enough that it seemed perfectly normal that I'd ride my bike for 30 minutes to find cell phone reception using trails that looked this spectacular.

Then, I'd sit in a spot like this one to upload my homework for an online course that I was taking. For some reason, there were very small zones anywhere near where we camped that had cell phone reception.

From a different "phone booth", I had this view. It was a very enjoyable spot to sit while data uploaded or while I read the new lectures for my course.

After all that riding both to find phone booths and for fun, I'd return to camp in time to take the Labraduo swimming in the afternoon, and then enjoy the sunset. We saw some superb ones during our trip!

Not only did the sunsets make the mountains glow but they made Shyla glow too! That's one of my favorite parts of camping on west-facing vistas.

I'm so thankful that places like our vacation camping spots exist. All year long, my mind flashes to them and I smile. I find myself hoping that my wish will come true that we'll get to visit again the following year. Life is good.