The scenery to be seen around Disappointment Valley is NEVER a disappointment!!!!!!!!!
Rainbow over Spring Creek Basin from the Disappointment Valley road. … See the double? Unfortunately, we didn’t get any rain out of this one.
Sunset was just about (or more?) dramatic! This is looking eastish; the cloud-glow is from sunset behind me.
And this pudgy little jackrabbit posed for me right near the road with some reflected sunset light giving him/her a lovely glow. 🙂
Think shooting rainbows is all, well, rainbows and unicorns?
Those “unicorns” have minds of their own that don’t often consider “posing” for two-leggeds to be part of any kind of their wild plan whatsoever.
I’m still on the hunt for what I consider a *perfect* (OK, even somewhat close) mustangs-under-the-rainbow shot. 🙂
Tenaz helped a bunch. Thanks, buddy. 🙂
Oh, and although it was NOT raining over Spring Creek Basin whatsoever anywhere (it was either virga or far up-valley beyond the basin’s boundaries) when we had the rainbow (as usual, which, I know, seems odd and unusual, except here (!?!), where it’s completely and totally normal), the rain came with sunset. 😉
We’re dancin’ a little bit with a lotta joy!
Pretty Gaia is still lean but looks sleek and shiny in her summer copper-gold in the first light of morning.
Are any kids still in school? Are they out for the summer?
Snow day, anyone? 🙂 (Telluride actually was under a winter weather advisory.)
Yay for the moisture!! These pix were taken Sunday morning (yesterday). SO thankful for the moisture, of any kind, at any level.
A closer look at Mr. Flash (yes, it’s him; I promise!), looking at my buggy recently. He spent most of the visit napping (that’s Gaia grazing in the background; the other mares mostly were napping, too), but when he woke up and noticed the buggy, all of a sudden, he realized he should be on defense. It’s a hard, exhausting job for a young stallion to keep track of all those mares, who are (only) fairly tolerant of having him tag along with them, thank you very much. 🙂
There are no mustangs in this post (crazy, I know, with a title like that), but mustangs were SEEN.
This, my friends and fans of wild things and wild places, is a burrowing owl. Possibly one of THE – I’m gonna say (type) it – *cutest* birds on the planet. You know how I adore kestrels. … I see them all the time. But burrowing owls?!?!?!?! This might be the third I’ve ever seen in Disappointment Valley.
Huge shout-out to friend Mary, who not only was driving but spotted this marvelous beauty along the road. She casually asked if I’d seen the owl – she thought it was an owl? – and obliged my horizon-gazing self by backing up to where – sure enough – this burrowing owl was standing on a burrow (possibly/likely previously the home of a prairie dog family) right alongside the road. The owl him/herself (?) obliged us by being its beautiful, gorgeous, adorable self so we could take a minute or two’s worth of photos before driving on to not disturb its … burrow guarding? We never saw another bird, and this one seemed pretty comfortable.
Who needs opposable thumbs when one has feet/talons perfectly capable of gripping dinner? (I think this might be a carpenterworm? Though it’s much earlier than I’ve ever seen them. Eat all you want, friend owl!)
Like … WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW! 🙂
And as if that weren’t enough, this was the end-of-day, sunset-lit, alien-mothership/stormcell cloud (one or the other … right?!) visible over upper Disappointment Valley just beyond (?) Spring Creek Basin:
Because … our planet Earth really is that gorgeous. 🙂
Notes: Owl pix taken with a 600mm lens from inside a vehicle. Crazy storm-cloud pic (and yes, the rest of the sky was basically blue and nearly clear) taken with my phone because a long-mustang-owl lens just could not capture the entirety of the above scene. Very last light of day. I sized the image and gave it a touch of sharpening, but otherwise, that is straight out of the camera, err, phone.
It really was a WOW kinda day. 🙂 “*Grateful*” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about this glorious little part of our great, wide, wild, wonderful world.
Tenaz may look surprised by the sudden snow blanketing his previously very brown world … but really, he was looking down the ridge at another stallion.
We got about an inch and a half of the good, white wet stuff before it all soaked into the ground, leaving it as brown as before … but nicely more damp. 🙂
That snow on McKenna Peak and Temple Butte – last week – is there no longer. Bright blue skies, stiff spring winds, full sunshine and temps soaring back to the 60s and 70F recently took care of that. But what I’m really thrilled about is that, after trying (and failing) to catch fairly closeup pix of Sancho’s cutie-patootie little mustachio, it’s visible in this longshot pic!
The snow melted much too fast, but as usual, the horses and the scenery deserved at least another look on another post. 🙂 This is Temple, seeking out bits of green in the white; Sancho is a bit farther away.
Spring Creek Basin and its mustangs really are that stunningly gorgeous. 🙂
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 