Six trails lead from Realization Point up Flagstaff Mountain Road just seven miles from my apartment. Each of them are great, and I’ve hiked all of them several times in the past five years.

But my favorite is a set of two trails that make a varied loop. I usually take the Range Front Trail up and the Ute Trail back, and that’s what I did this morning.

If anyone has an questions about why we call it the Range Front Trail, he or she just needs to hike up to this overlook:
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Four trails climb up to Frazer Meadow at the center of Golden Gate Canyon State Park. During the past four years I hiked three of them.

Today, with my friend Mark Bobb we hiked up the fourth one, the Coyote Trail. Now I know why I hadn’t hiked it before.

We took the Coyote Trail from Bootleg Bottom, past a bootlegger’s shack, up to Frazer Meadow at about 9,000 feet. This is one of the three “most difficult” trails, according to the state park’s map. But since I had hiked the other two “most difficult” trails without problem, I was sure it would be easy.
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After more than three years of trying, this week I finally captured some photos of the turtles who live in Tantra Lake that are good enough to share.

At lunchtime today I slowly snuck up on this turtle sunning on a bank by the lake:

Sunning on the Bank

The Indian Peaks Wilderness is even more beautiful than the much more famous than Rocky Mountain National Park just to the north, which many more tourists visit. This wilderness is almost like Boulder’s private nature preserve.

For more than half a year I’ve been waiting for the snow to melt so I could get back to the Indian Peaks. Today I returned.

Because the wildflowers start blooming first at lower elevations, I decided to take one of the lower trails. Lower, but not low, the trail from the Hessie Trailhead starts at 9,000 feet and climbs quickly to 9,800 feet at Lost Lake.
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Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone –
Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”

Today I felt what Joni Mitchell expressed in her song. I didn’t really appreciate my Canon 50D SLR camera and my 18-200mm telephoto zoom lens until I had to send them back to Canon for repair after I fell on them May 8.

But when I got them back yesterday after making do without them for a month and a half, I knew what I had lost and regained. Having this wonderful photographic equipment again motivated me to get out on the trail early this morning. It somehow, in a way that I don’t completely understand, also motivated me to become a better photographer.
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Here north of the 40th parallel at the end of spring the sun sets late. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hike Walker Ranch yesterday.

This Sunday as usual was a busy day for me: Church services in the morning and writing an article in the afternoon. But I finished my article in time to get to the Walker Ranch Trailhead in plenty of sunshine a little after 6 p.m.

I went in search of wildflowers. An article in the local newspaper a few days ago said that Walker Ranch and Flatirons Vista Trail, where I hiked on Friday, has them in profusion. They told the truth.
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Five months ago was my most recent hike on the Flatirons Vista Loop. The weather was a lot colder then, about 35 degrees. This morning was a much more pleasant 75 degrees.

Today was my first chance to get back on the trail since falling as I hiked down the steep and rocky trail from Crater Lake on Saturday. I’m now no longer limping from the puncture wound that sent me to the Aspen Area Hospital.

Still, today I chose one of the less steep trails around Boulder. I also picked Flatirons Vista because the local newspaper had singled it out a few days ago for the wildflowers in bloom there. The paper was right.
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A “Canon Days” event this weekend drew my friend Mark and me to Leadville, Colorado. Sponsored by Canon USA and Eaglewood Camera in Littleton, Colorado, the purpose of the event was to give Canon owners, like Mark and me, the opportunity to check out the new Canon bodies and lenses.

While we missed our chance on Saturday, we more than made up for it Sunday. I checked out almost $5,000 worth of photography equipment. All day Sunday I used the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera and the L-series (”Luxury,” or top-of-the-line) 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. I had been lusting after that professional camera and lens.

They do take exceptional photos. The camera wasn’t much heavier than my Canon EOS 50D (28.6 ounces v. 25.7 ounces). But it is $2700 v. $1200 for my 50D.
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My friend Mark and I carefully planned our hike Saturday morning. In vain.

Since we were due to a “Canon Days” event in our Leadville hotel at 10 a.m., we made sure to get an early start so that we could squeeze in a hike. The previous evening we bought lunchmeat for our breakfasts and also showered then, setting the alarm for 5 a.m.

Our destination was Windsor Lake for a four-mile hike from 10,790 feet to 11,638, starting at only a slightly higher elevation than Leadville. But when we got to the trailhead the temperature was 36 degrees. Worse was several feet of snow covering the trail. After a short, miserable hike on the snow, we reluctantly turned around and rethought our plans.
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This weekend my friend Mark and I drove about 120 miles from our homes in Boulder to Leadville in Central Colorado. We have even more in common. Mark is a member of the diabetes support group that meets monthly at my apartment, and we are both avid hikers and nature photographers. He also has a Canon camera, but his is full-frame.

I am glad that we are both spontaneous. That characteristic turned out to be especially important, because we had to change our plans many times over the course of our three-day vacation.

We went to Leadville for both hiking and photography. We achieved those objectives by making constant adjustments in our plans.
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