As a second post (pun loosely intended) for today, the first snow of the 2020-21 cold season blanketed the region northwest of Lincoln, locally known as the "Bohemian Alps". The peaking fall colors, combined with overcast skies and snow on recently harvested fields made for a beautiful Great Plains autumn scene. Photo taken from Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Cemetery, just north of Abie, NE, mid-October 2020.
Since it's been several weeks since my last post, I will be doing two for this week to start to catch up for lost weeks. The first photo for this week is from the Dark Canyon/Irwin Lake/Dyke Trail loop in Gunnison National Forest along Kebler Pass. The fall foliage was spectacular along this 6 mile hike in late September 2020.
A grove of aspen trees just beginning to show off brilliant fall colors in late September 2019. Even during the middle of the day, this was an easy picture to take; just walked into the forest, pointed the camera skyward, and click! This picture was taken after hiking the Three Lakes Trail off of Gunnison County Route 12 between Paonia and Crested Butte, CO, the road which summits Kebler Pass (well known for its spectacular autumn shows). My family and I were a bit early, as fall colors in 2019 were a bit delayed, and were still spotty on September 24th in this region. As can be seen below, many trees were more of an off-green than gold. This was particularly true of the groves lining the West Elk Mountains to the north of CR 12.
In mid-October 2019, I took a day for hiking and photography at Waubonsie State Park in southwest Iowa and Brickyard Hill Conservation Area in northwest Missouri, as well as surrounding parts of the I-29 corridor near the Iowa/Missouri state line. Much of the fall foliage in the Missouri River floodplain (primarily cottonwood trees) and surrounding Loess Hills lining the Missouri River was peaking at this time.
When driving from Lincoln to Waubonsie State Park in the morning, I noticed an assortment of hay bales on a farm off of Iowa State Route 2, just to the east of I-29. Thankfully, the weather cooperated later that day, such that the golden hour lighting on the recently harvested hay field, combined with foliage in the Loess Hills, made for a pleasant pastoral scene.
I'll probably include photos from other parts of this day trip in future posts.
Later this month, I am planning a hiking trip to southern Colorado, one of my favorite areas in the United States. On a road trip last year (which this picture is from), one of my friends referred to southern Colorado and eastern Utah as (paraphrasing) 'very interestingly arranged foliage and rocks'. This is particularly true of the Great Sand Dunes and surrounding mountains and valley floor. This picture was taken on a crisp, early summer (June 2019) morning in Great Sand Dunes National Park, looking towards the surrounding Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A dusting of snow had fallen the night before, making the early morning sun shining on this peak even more spectacular.
On the afternoon of Sunday, August 16, 2020, I bolted north to David City to meet up with a southeastward moving cluster of supercells, which were gradually congealing into a forward-propagating MCS. For the second time in three days, I was treated to beautiful landscapes and storms (see southwest moving tornadic supercell from August 14), as I got to watch somewhat discrete updrafts briefly acquire rotation and then merge, with the Platte River valley in the foreground. Once storms became a linear cluster, they accelerated south, and I had trouble getting back ahead of the ribbon-like shelf cloud. I finally got well ahead of the southwest corner of the gust front near the Schoenstatt Shrine north of Crete, NE. The Catholic chapel in the background peeking above the woods, at the end of a winding gravel road, combined beautifully with the wavy lobe and cleft pattern in the shelf cloud along the gust front.
This chase continued to the northwest as more supercells, and eventually a second storm cluster, moved south-southeast in the northwest flow regime. The sunset with mammatus trailing the second storm west-northwest of Lincoln was brilliantly colored, and will likely be featured in another post.
