Changing of the Colors in Central Colorado - 09-24-11 through 09-26-11

Eric & I started our trip heading southwest on 285 to the Buena Vista area.  Our first stop was St. Elmo's Ghost Town Near Tincup.  It was a pretty interesting town with the most of the buildings still standing and some people owned and lived in the buildings during the summer months.  Not to mention that the colors were a perfect backdrop for pictures.

On our way to Leadville, we made a few stops along the way to take pictures.

We spent the night in Leadville and woke up to beautiful sights.  Before we left, we explored downtown leadville with all of it's cool buildings and it made for some interesting pictures.

Our next stop for the day was the Marble/Crystal area.  We decided that since we were in the area, we would take the trail that lead up to the Crystal Mill and continue on the Lead King Basin trail.  The below picture is what the trail looked like most of the time, strickly a 4X4 trail.  Eric had a lot of fun re-arranging our internal organs as well :)

We spent the night in Aspen and took a few hours walking around downtown, looking at all of the expensive stores and richie-rich types walking around.  The next day, we headed up to take pictures of the Maroon Bells.  It is the most photographed place in Colorado, and for good reason.  It was a short walk up to the lake and pretty much any view you had along the shore was picture perfect.  A few pictures down you will notice the flock of photographers lined up for pictures.

On our journey back, we stopped in a small ghost town in Ashcroft.

The last ghost town on our list was in Independence.  I couldn't imagine living there durning a winter, so close to the Continental Divide.

On the east side of the Continental Divide, headed over to Twin Lakes, we saw this picturesque farm nestled in trees full of color.