Mueller Park – Fall!

 

After a rather exciting day at Color Fest I decided to drive around and get some nice pictures of the mountains that are currently exploding with color. I didn’t anticipate hiking today, but we stopped by the Mueller Park trailhead and well, one thing led to another…

I live pretty close to Mueller Park so it is one of the more common trails I hike. Late Fall of 2010, Winter 2010, and Summer in 2011 albeit a different trail within the same park.

Huh. I thought for sure I have done it in the springtime. I guess I was mistaken when I said now that I have hiked this in fall I have done every season here. Guess I have an excuse to return, you know, so I’m not a liar. :-p

Colorful shot down the street.

The entrance into Mueller Park.

I love how otherwise boring shots are rather interesting with some color!

The hillsides are so beautiful!

Sections of the trail aren’t so bad either!

View down into the smoggy valley below. We still had some smoke from fires elsewhere blowing into the valley.

Lots and lots of color!

Trail of color!

Elephant Rock.

A little closer.

And we have reached the pipeline scar.

And what is this? A deer and her fawn. Didn’t have my telephoto lens unfortunately, so not a terribly great pic.

The scar, surrounded by color. I have mentioned before what the scar is, they are building a pipeline. They promise to fill it in again when they are done, but going on 2 years now it is an ugly scar traversing the mountainside.

Well this officially marks the highest I have hiked here. I have always wanted to make it to Elephant Rock, but due in part to the pipeline, and timing of hikes (like today) it just hasn’t been in the cards for me, yet.

Itty bitty deer in front of lots of color.

 

I am kind of digging the fall colors with the fading light.

This is the closest to sundown we have been on the trail in a while so, without actual flashlights we had to double time it to be safe.

All in all, not a bad little fall hike. The color seemed to be more on the other side of this little canyon than the one we were on, but it was still very pretty. We saw some deer, which is always nice.

9 out of 10 Squirrels.