Leon Turnbull Photography

I figured you folks might be tired of all the waterfalls lately, so here’s something a bit different.

My wife and kids are on their annual pilgrimage to the California coast. Male adults are not invited. It really makes me wonder what they do there all week. I am home alone with just my dog and cat. It’s quite lonely with no one else around here. I absolutely needed to get out photographing this weekend. I had a plan to go on a big hike in the dark to be at a certain lake for sunrise, but I just did not feel like getting up so early and going on a difficult night hike this weekend. So instead, I thought I would just drive up to Monitor Pass and see if I could find any fall colors. It is a bit early in the year and the reports I read indicated there were not any colors up there yet, so I was not expecting to find much of anything. Boy, was I ever wrong. The colors in the Aspen trees are out in full force at the top of Monitor Pass right now. Lots of yellow everywhere, and a bit of orange as well. I was very surprised and very pleased to find this color so early in the year. Down at the lower elevations (Hope Valley), it is still mostly green there (with some yellow). They need another week for the colors to turn there, but up at Monitor Pass it was wonderful.

There are some really nice large Aspen groves at the top of Monitor Pass. You could almost get lost wandering around in them. I think I almost did get lost. They’re also quite thick, at least where I was this weekend. I didn’t find too many good shots that I liked. But I did find this fallen tree which I thought worked pretty well for a composition. If nothing else, at least my dog had fun wandering through the thick Aspen trees with me.