Glorious cottonwoods and blooming rabbitbrush along (dry) Disappointment Creek in Disappointment Valley draw admirers’ eyes toward McKenna Peak and Temple Butte above and beyond Spring Creek Basin. The sky isn’t blue-blue because we’ve had some gauzy, hazy, high “clouds.”
Skywalker saunters after bands as another days slides toward night in Spring Creek Basin.
With mustangs like Spirit taking advantage of the dense, junglelike cover in Spring Creek Basin, it’s a wonder we ever find them at all.
🙂
Storm and his band prefer the quiet places beyond the back of beyond. In the course of looking for them (and finding them, sometimes) in those places this year, they’ve shown me a number of seeps. Even after all these years and lots and lots (LOTS!) of wandering, they teach me how much I have to learn about this wonderful place they call home.
🙂 Who doesn’t love to learn new things? 🙂
Readers have seen a lot of pix of La Sal Mountains in my photos of mustangs in Spring Creek Basin. They form a pretty dramatic range on our northwestern horizon.
During a couple of recent aspen-leaf-peeping drives, I had the opportunity to see our landmarks from different perspectives, including from those not-so-far-away La Sals.
Spring Creek Basin, in Disappointment Valley, is a little hazy with smoke in this view southeast from below Mount Peale (the highest La Sal peak), and in this smallish view, maybe hard to pick out. But visible – in the upper, farthest area of the pic – are McKenna Peak, Temple Butte, submarine ridge (my name for it), Brumley Point, Round Top, Flat Top, Filly Peak and the rimrocks on the western edge of the basin.
Autumn-tinged Gambel oak is in the foreground.
This may be the most colorful image I’ll ever get to take of Temple Butte.
It’s taken from a couple of miles east of Groundhog Reservoir, looking northwestish. Spring Creek Basin is on the *other* side of Temple Butte from this perspective.
Happy autumn. I hope you’re all enjoying the colors of the changing season and the cooler temps!
At 6:50:28 p.m., Killian was waiting for his band to graze their way to the top of the ridge.
At 6:51:27 p.m., this was happening:
Killian was already gone, moseying on in the shade of sunset.
By 7:09:38 pm., the ponies were browsing over the ridge, I was on my way back to the Jeep, and the moon was still rising.
Another beautiful day – and night – in the basin.
The beauty doesn’t mind playing in the dirt now and then. 🙂
This is a pic that precedes Wednesday’s pic by 14 frames … and 31 seconds.
It was meant to follow the “Bewitched” post, which featured unusual lighting glowing over our handsome Sundance. … And then snow happened. 🙂
So here’s the rest of that story:
At the time I took these photos, I was in or at the edge of the shade, and Sundance was moseying on after his band, already within the shadow of Valentine Mesa. The perspective of the image is that I’m facing southeast-ish, with southwest to my right-ish. It was just after 7 p.m., and depending where you are in Spring Creek Basin or greater Disappointment Valley, the sun sets around 7:30 p.m.
As Sundance walked past, I pivoted to take pix … snapping several frames, one of which was the pic of Wednesday’s post, where the spotlight of divine light seems to be coming from above his left shoulder – or from the southeast. Which is wild and weird because the sun was setting basically in front of him!
🙂 Who can explain the beauty of magic??
(Note: I had no idea I’d captured Wednesday’s blog pic until I was looking through images on my computer a couple of days after I’d taken them.)
It was like this again yesterday.
Bad smoke. Maybe the worst. And apparently, it was coming from fires in Utah.
From the air-quality alert we’re under until 9 this morning (via the Weather Channel website):
IMPACTS…Areas of moderate to heavy smoke have been observed across central and western Colorado due to transported smoke from wildfires in northeastern Utah. Gusty winds and dry conditions at the Utah fires will result in high fire activity on Monday and continued periods of moderate to heavy smoke across central and western Colorado through at least Monday evening. Rain and snow moving into the area late Monday night will result in a significant decrease in smoke concentrations in central and northwestern Colorado by early Tuesday morning, with slower improvement expected for southwestern Colorado.
Uggy uggy yucky yucky.
Here’s hoping that the cooler weather and some moisture on its way disperses the smoke – and dampens any fires it also hopefully covers!
Storm is always the focus!
He was looking at my Jeep, parked on the road, across the flat, over the arroyo and up the hill. Not close … but different. It hadn’t been there previously, and nobody has eyes for *different* like a mustang. I think it’s funny that he wasn’t at all worried about me, standing a few yards away, but he was intent on making sure that little black buggy, close to half a mile away, wasn’t a danger to his family.
He and his band had found one of the three newly-watery ponds. They had apparently already watered when I found them and were grazing their way into the shade of the late afternoon.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 