Colorado Aspens, 2009

Today we left the Denver area and headed to the southwest corner of Colorado before heading up to Arches park in Utah. We left Denver on Interstate-70 driving west for about 70 miles. We didn't get very far before encountering William F Cody's grave - but more about that later.

We headed up over the first of the Rocky Mountain passes, through the Eisenhower tunnel and then shortly turned south on Colorado 91 to Leadville where we picked up U.S. 24 south until we turned west. Here we headed over the Monarch Pass to Gunnison where we stopped for the night.

Along the way, we saw Aspens. Beautiful Aspens. Now, back home in Minnesota the Aspen isn't even called an Aspen. We call it a poplar tree but then corrupt that a bit into the derisive "Popple." As in, "No real trees, just a bunch of popple."

But, oh my, what a tree the Aspen is when you set a bunch of them down together and their leaves turn color. These are just a few images that I captured today. Linda kept reminding me that I couldn't take a picture of every Aspen in Colorado!

Just enjoy the view!