Spruce Mountain Trail

A day van trip to a nearby open space

You might be wondering where my aurora borealis shots are. The answer is that I didn’t take any. I had a chronic illness flare that Friday and decided to go to bed and get rest, missing a once-in-a-lifetime event. Am I bummed? Of course. But I know that I’ll see the northern lights at some point in my life.

I also went to bed early that Friday because Adam asked if I would go with him the next day as he wanted to get a long gravel ride in on Saturday morning. I’m always down for a van trip, even if it’s only for a few hours. I woke up Saturday pretty tired from my flare-up, but I told myself that if I still felt like shit, I would stay in the van and read a book, or maybe take a van nap because I love those!

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never visited Greenland Open Space despite living in the Springs for fifteen years. Now that we have the van, I’m more open to these types of day trips because “our house” (my comfort zone) travels along with us.

Once we got to the trailhead, I felt well enough to go for a hike. I found a trail that looked promising on AllTrails, and I figured that by cutting out the extra loop, my hike would be around five miles.

There was a lot of Gambel Oak at the beginning of the trail

I loved the bright color of whatever was growing on this tree. The color brought out the rugged structure of the bark.

The morning started out quite cool and cloudy.

There are busy train tracks near the open space. I never heard the train horn, but I could hear the rumbling in the distance. At least four trains went by while I was hiking.

It was difficult to capture the beauty of hiking between the pines. The smell of the pines was amazing!

There was a clearing on the hike. If it wasn’t so cloudy, I could have seen Pikes Peak in the distance.

As I hit the halfway point, known as Windy Point, the sun came out. While the sun helped warm up the air temperature (because it was WINDY!), the light washed out the views. I had to heavily edit the afternoon shots in Lightroom.

The open space was SO green!

This picture does not capture how beautiful the light was hitting this solo pine.

There were cool rock formations in the distance.

Once the sun came out, I took a bunch of shots of the shadows on the trail.

Once I reached the end of the trail, I noticed clouds growing to the west. When I got to the van, I heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Those storm clouds, however, created some last-minute photography drama!

AllTrails said the hike was around five miles, but I ended up hiking for almost six. I was exhausted! I could have used a van nap, but Adam finished his ride not long after me. I made up for the lack of a nap by stopping and picking up some pizza to go.

Cheers.