Denver 2017 - Dillon Panorama

As stated a few posts ago, my wife Chenjean, Allison our daughter, and I went to Colorado, specifically Denver and environs, in May of this year.  Chenjean had a meeting there, and we traditionally piggy-back on those to enjoy budget vacations, as the company pays for at least the hotel.  So we were excited to make this trip, and were glad that Allison was able to join.

While there we took a drive out into the mountains, went to the zoo, went on walks downtown, and visited several museums.  These all of course are superb opportunities to grow and practice the art of snapping photos.  So what's the best place to start?  We're from Houston and we're in Colorado, so of course it's the mountains!

The first day, while Chenjean was attending meetings on how to be a better accountant, Allison and I slipped over to the Dillon area.  This ended up being the highlight of the trip, as I've always loved being in the mountains and Allison had never seen any real snow.  Thus the anticipation for this drive grew by the hour, as from downtown Denver you can easily see the mountains to the west.

It was my objective to get as close to the snowy parts as possible and didn't know how successful we'd be, so it was a surprise when, hardly an hour out of town, we had climbed to an altitude of 11,500 on I-70 and experienced the first snow flurries.  It was still early enough in the year to see the snow from a recent storm piled high on the trees and rooftops.  Allison used both her camera and mine (after hers ran out of juice) to snap away through the windshield and her passenger side window.  But the best was yet to come.

We decided on Dillon because it was a reasonable distance and would allow us to do some things before having to head back to Denver in time for Chenjean's meeting to end.  The 6-shot panorama you see above (best seen by clicking to enlarge) is from our first stop, next to the reservoir adjacent to town.  It was the middle of a weekday and kids were still in school, so we pulled into a park and had the place to ourselves.  This was the first time we could be outside to experience intermittent snow showers coming in from the higher elevations.  We had fun thinking that, since we were out there by ourselves, there was a good change we'd see some wildlife...not eliminating the possibility of a lion or bear!  Probably not in much danger, though, as we were just a couple of miles from Dillon and there was some road construction going on just a few hundred yards down the road.