Last week we took off a few days to spend in the Colorado Rockies. As usual it was a very nice trip and we had a great time. Hope you will enjoy the pictures.

On a side note, one of the features of our travels is that Mike likes to find new music for each trip and so, in our minds, each trip ends up associated with some set of music. If you have not discovered them on your own, we would like to recommend two albums that dominated this trip for us:  Bruce Springsteen's new album "Western Sky" and the sound track from the movie "Echo in the Canyon," which is built around a live concert by Jakob Dylan and friends doing covers of music that grew out of Laurel Canyon in the late 60s. (It is also a pretty darn good movie.)


Driving through White Sands National Monument - near Las Cruces - with the Sacramento Mountains in the distance

Breakfast in Vaughn, New Mexico - fun little diner, but don't bother stopping here (Indigestion from a waffle?)

Early morning at Sugarite Canyon State Park, NM

Hiking in the Rocky Mountains near Nederland, CO

Ruby Crowned Kinglet 

Aspen Grove in Cold Springs Campground, outside of Golden, Colorado

Chip (or maybe Dale)

Echo Lake - along the road to Mt Evans, CO

Ducks in Echo Lake

Blue Damselfly on a leaf

Dennis at Echo Lake Picnic Area

View of the mountains from Leadville, CO - there are supposed to be something like a dozen 14,000 foot peaks along this road

Yellow flowers in the desert in northern New Mexico

New Mexico sky - near Bandelier National Monument

Frijoles Canyon - Bandelier National Monument

Dennis at the visitor center - Bandelier National Monument

Mike in the ruins of the main pueblo at Bandelier

Ruins of the cliff dwellings at Bandelier 

A current resident of Bandelier

Wildflowers at Bandelier 

The moon at Bandelier 

And after we got back to Las Cruces we took another hike:  About half a mile from the pecan groves along the Rio Grande River, Mike at the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument