I still haven’t made much progress in getting through the hundreds of photos I took up at Mount Evans on Wednesday. I’ll start with some shots I took at the two spots where I always stop on the way TO Mount Evans. One is a big ol’ meadow and the other is called Juniper Pass where there is a large outcropping of rock with lots of pretty rock-gardeny flowers.
More tomorrow!
I mentioned this time last year that March is typically the snowiest month in the Denver area. Well, true to form and just two days from the first day of spring, we have snow on the ground again. But it’s all good. We certainly need the moisture. Otherwise how would all of these pretty wildflowers grow? 
Today’s Colorado wildflower is the Whipple Penstemon. There are bunches of species of penstemon in Colorado, the common name of which is beardtongue. According to Wikipedia:
The most distinctive feature of the genus is the prominent staminode, an infertile stamen. The staminode takes a variety of forms in the different species; while typically a long straight filament extending to the mouth of the corolla, some are longer and extremely hairy, giving the general appearance of an open mouth with a fuzzy tongue protruding and inspiring the common name beardtongue.
The Whipple Penstemon, aka Dusky Beardtongue, grows only in subalpine and alpine areas of Colorado’s mountains. The flowers can be found in two different shades: purple and a creamy white.
Purple Dusky Penstemon, Ouzel Falls Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park
Creamy white Dusky Penstemon, Lake Isabelle Trail, Indian Peaks Wilderness Area
OK, one more post on the Grass Creek Trail and then I’ll move along.
Western wallflower
When I build my house in the meadow, this will be my driveway.
Shooting stars
Bluemist penstemon
I know it looks like I bumped up the saturation on the photograph above to ridiculous levels, but I didn’t touch the color settings. Bluemist penstemons are truly that startlingly electric blue.
I’ve finished uploading photos to my Grass Creek Trail gallery. As usual, I highly recommend viewing the photos as a slideshow (click on the Slideshow button in the upper right corner). I think they look a lot nicer that way.
The folks over at one of my favorite photography-related websites, the Digital Photography School (DPS), conduct assignments and challenges on a regular basis. The topic of this weekend’s photography challenge is the color BLUE. That seems easy enough so I think it might be fun to participate. I’ll post my results in Monday’s blog entry. Does anyone else want to play? The rules for the challenge are quite simple: 1) Your photos have to be NEW, not something dug out of your archives; and 2) the photo should feature the color blue in a predominant sort of way. That’s about it. If you’re in, take a bunch of blue pics starting now and email 2 or 3 of your favorites to me at 39DegN@gmail.com by Sunday evening (Mountain Standard Time) and put the word BLUE in the subject line. Be sure to include your name so I can give you credit and a title if you wish. There have been a lot of entries already on the DPS site, so scroll down and look at the comment section HERE if you need inspiration.
And by the way, you don’t need a fancy schmancy camera to take part in this. It’s just for fun (and to help train your eye to see specific things), so there’s no critique involved, no winners, no prizes. Just pictures of blue stuff.
Meanwhile, here’s something blue that I did dig out of my archives so it totally doesn’t count:
Bluemist Penstemon