Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park’s heavily traveled highway to the sky. It inspired awe before the first motorist ever traveled it. “It is hard to describe what a sensation this new road is going to make,” predicted Horace Albright, director of the National Park Service, in 1931 during the road’s construction. “You will have the whole sweep of the Rockies before you in all directions.” ~National Park Service
We were in Denver for a family reunion in August 2017. Afterward we set out to visit a few favorite location around Colorado. Cyndie and I had the privilege once again to visit Rocky Mountain National Park in August 2017.
One can never tire of the views on this road to the sky. I revel in every opportunity to spend time peering out over these mountain-scapes. I am grateful for each opportunity to add more photos of this extraordinarily beautiful place to my collection.
Mountain Plants
Forest Canyon Overlook
Lucy Loo
Our amazing little lovable bundle of energy, Lucy, accompanied us on this trip. She did well with the altitude and all the excitement. She appeared to be very thrilled with being compared in size to a Marmot.
Independence Pass was originally known as Hunter Pass. It is a high mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado in the United States. The elevation on the Continental Divide in the Sawatch Range is 12,095 ft. The pass is midway between Aspen and Twin Lakes, on the border between Pitkin and Lake counties. State Highway 82 traverses it. The is the highest elevation of a paved Colorado state highway on a through road. ~wikipedia
HISTORY
On July 4, 1879, a group from Leadville struck gold in the uppermost Roaring Fork valley below the pass. Four miles to the west, they established a settlement in the upper Roaring Fork Valley that eventually took the name Independence from the holiday on which it was established. The pass, the lake from which the Roaring Fork rises and another nearby mountain all took that name as well. The Twin Lakes and Roaring Fork Toll Company, established to build a road through to the camps in the lower Roaring Fork Valley, improved the original path over the pass sufficiently enough by 1880 that horses could be used for the trip. ~wikipedia
Independence Pass Photo Map
We drove to Independence Pass from Aspen. A few miles out of Aspen you will see Difficult Campground. The name cracked me up a bit; it sounds really inviting. I am sure it is a wonderful place to camp.
State Highway 82 Views (ascending)
The road grade from here steepens and your field of view widens as you ascend to the pass. The conifer trees blanketing the mountain side is simply beautiful and the aspen trees glowed yellow in places.
Weller Lake Trail
Part way up the pass we decided to pull off, stretch our legs a bit and hike around. You are immediately enveloped in the conifer trees once on the trail. We spied a stump where a squirrel had eaten its fill of pine nuts.
Independence Lake Trail Head
Just before Independence Pass in a great place to pull off and hike. The air is a wee bit thin here and we moved along the trail slowly. We didn’t venture all the way up to Independence Lake. We gained some altitude and took some pictures; then returned to the comfort of the SUV.
Independence Pass
The scenery at the pass (and all along the 44 mile route) is some of the most spectacular in all Colorado, and perhaps the finest you can view from a major highway, The road runs right beneath many great mountains including the highest in the state (14,433 foot Mount Elbert), and rises well above the treeline into the stark Alpine tundra zone. We passed many lakes, rivers, steep-sided valleys, thick forests of fir and extensive aspen groves. In the Fall, the aspen groves glow yellow; it is quite beautiful.
State Highway 82 Views (descending)
The beauty continues on as you descend from the pass toward Twin Lakes.
My wife and I recently visited Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We traveled around the entire island. As you can imagine, the scenery and sites where quite picturesque.
Image from petapixel.com
Just before leaving on our trip we upgraded our iPhone from 5S to 6S. I was and continue to be very impressed with this rendition. The camera stills and 4k video are outstanding. We opted for the 64GB model thinking we didn’t want to run out of space due to large amount of photos and videos. We didn’t even come close; a 32GB model would have suffice, but that is no longer an option. In total, I alone shot 77 panoramas, 35 Selfies, 22 Videos and hundreds of other photos.
The panorama feature is by far my favorite. As a photographer that has shot, stitched and edit numerous panorama’s from a DSLRs files – using an iPhone for this purpose is almost effortless.
Map Module in LR
Another wonderful feature is the geo tagging of every photo. The GPS data is nice to have when you import all of your photos into Lightroom. The Map Module quickly and easily displays all of the location your used your iPhone. I do have a GPS device for our Nikon DLS. The Nikon GP-1A GPS Unit seemingly takes a while to lock in its position. I don’t want to spend my time waiting on a green light to take a photo. I leave it home more frequently now that I shoot with both my DSLR and iPhone.
Image from digital-photography-school.com
Our Nikon D700 and iPhone 6S each have a 12MP sensor. Hard to believe. The sensors are very different though. The D700 sensor measures 36x24mm and the iPhone just 4.8×3.6mm. I am amazed at the quality that something so tiny can produce; however, It does have many limitation. It doesn’t even begin to perform as well as the larger one. Low light, action and overall quality are very different. But when you consider ease of use, size, and the complete package the iPhone places in your finger tips; in my opinion it is hard not to consider it a serious camera for traveling and a complete replacement for a point and shoot camera altogether. With the addition of a third party camera app like ProCamera, you have most manual setting at your fingertips. I like ProCamera as it also allows you to insert your copyright info into the EXIF data of every image.
A new feature on the recent iPhone release is Live Photo. It is an interesting and entertaining feature. The result is both an image file and movie file; when you import the photo into Lightroom, the .jpg is hidden. Your options and solution to this issue can be found [here].
Stay tuned for deluge of photos I captured while on holiday in Ireland. I’ve reviewed and processed all the photos from my iPhone thus far and have a few thousand to work through from other cameras I shot with.
