Another Throwback Thursday

Of course, you could be seeing this for the first time, and whenever I look at these photos, I feel that way, too: like it’s still all brand new! October of 2023 was home to a marvel bigger than just Colorado HIGH SKY, with a little bit of New Mexico, and even Arizona, also involved in a “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse. To see the eclipse, I traveled through beautiful southwestern Colorado just as Autumn was getting started.

Driving through the Rio Grande Valley towards the Four Corners, I experienced the colors and glow of “Autumn” wherever I went. Cottonwoods lined the riverbanks and glowed with the golden hues of the season.

Mountain passes rose and fell beneath me as I trucked over hundreds of miles in scenic country in ideal conditions.

Mesa Verde was my favorite vacation spot to see with my young kids, having visited there twenty years before this trip. While I got close enough to see the mesa, I didn’t enter the national monument this time.

The timing was perfect to see the iconic Ute Mountain, sometimes called “Sleeping Ute Mountain” as the clouds, sun, and contrails combined to create a vision straight from southwestern mythos and art.

The next day dawned bright and clear for the eclipse, but the landscape of southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico is stunning and captivating. I also briefly stopped in Arizona to catch the sunrise!

In New Mexico, the sunken river valleys and mesas revealed the scars of erosion.

Shiprock, of course, is a different story, defiant of wear and erosion.

The spectacle of the eclipse was hard to capture. The light dimmed, shadows became sharp, but through dark filters (ND2000, a neutral density filter specially made for long-exposure photography), the Ring of Fire burned!

By the time I got home that evening, after driving 830 miles solo, I knew that I’d want to go back, eclipse or no! Thanks for joining me on this review of an adventure beyond the Colorado HIGH SKY!