Cache La Poudre River Canyon, Estes Park, Ft Collins, CO

Last week, in addition to visiting numerous breweries in the Ft. Collins/Loveland area of Colorado, we did manage to get in a couple of hikes.  We have been up to Estes before and it is always stunning up there of course.  We had not been to the Cache la Poudre River Canyon, another beautiful scenic area.  We must go back there next time as time and the rain were not on our side this visit.

a beautiful raging river

 A few pics from the Gem Lake trail in Estes:

Rocky Mountain NP

Mike with our friend Annmarie

unusual rock formation called "Paul Bunyons Boot"

 Hewlett Gultch trail this day in Poudre Canyon took us through a lovely wide canyon area with some great bird sightings!

lazuli bunting

looks like this bald eagle is carrying quite a load!! A partial deer carcass!!!

yellow breasted chat

Great Sand Dunes NP, CO

Before arriving in Colorado Springs to spend a couple of weeks with friends, we spent a couple of days in Blanca near Great Sand Dunes National Park. 

Well worth a visit, these immense sand dunes are permanent, meaning that they do not change much at all due to high moisture content from bordering Medano Creek and neighboring agricultural fields.  We enjoyed a nice hike on the outer edge enabling us to look down on the dunes and creek areas.  It is a very busy park this time of year for playing in the sand and water from the creek.

the tallest dune rises 700 feet high!

you have to wade across the creek to access the dunes

an inland beach for many people!!

We also spend a few hours at the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge close by.  It was a lot of fun to see porcupines in the wild up close!

red winged blackbird

a white faced ibis with snow capped mountains in the background:)

meadowlark

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, CO

This is one of those little known gems of the national park system.  It is quite lovely and well worth a visit. !! Very impressive,  the canyon drops 2700 feet to the river below.  We drove to the park from Durango in the jeep and so had to cross 3 - 10 to 11 thousand foot summits.  We were happy when we did it that we had changed our previous plans of driving the motorhome that route!!  As you can see, we had some "weather" along the way!  It was beautiful and fun.  We did an overnight in Ouray just driving the jeep.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

it was a beautiful spring day!

apparently you can kayak this river.....if you can do at least  5 rapids!!!!!

view from our motel in Ouray