I know I am way late getting these posts up, but I guess better late than never.  This fall, once again I took the opportunity to take a road trip around southern Colorado.  This time, however, I would be making the trip by myself.  That came about for one immutable truth– the aspens do not wait for an opening in our busy schedules to turn into the bright vibrant colors that we seek as photographers.  In general, the best two weekends for seeing the turning of the aspens in the Colorado mountains are the last week of September and the first week of October.  Before then, only a few of the aspens have started turning yellow and orange, leaving most still green.  After those two weeks, the leaves start falling off the trees entirely, leaving big areas of bald trees to ruin otherwise beautiful photos.  At any point during this time, there can be snow storms that go through the mountains.  While the snow can make stunning photos along with the changing aspens, the snow also hastens the decline of the leaves.  So to get the full experience, you really need to plan on that two week window, and I was fully committed to getting there.  

I made my trip for Friday September 30th through Monday October 3rd.  Usually I prefer to take off a Friday to make a three day weekend, but this year there was another factor involved.  Thanks to news passed along by fellow photographers, I found out that there was a significant construction project happening on Kebler Pass which would nearly shut down that road during the week, only letting traffic through certain portions every few hours.  On the weekends, they would leave it open.  Kebler Pass is not only a big photo location, but my the overall direction of my road trip depended on going over that pass towards the West and continuing on to Montrose, so I decided to start my trip such that I could go over Kebler Pass on Saturday morning.

My plan for the trip was this: Take off early from work on Friday and head towards Crested Butte and stay there Friday night.  Saturday morning, go over Kebler Pass (taking plenty of photos along the way), end up on Highway 133, which I would take West through Paonia, Hotchkiss and Delta before taking Highway 50 South into Montrose.  At this point, I would actually go to the airport and rent an SUV to use for the following two days, because I would be going over some mountains passes which would beat the crap out of my Nissan Altima.  After shooting some stuff near Ridgway (more details to come in following posts), I would head back into Montrose and stay the night.  Sunday, I would again head South and keep exploring the county roads near Ridgway.  In the afternoon, I would make the trip over Last Dollar Road and eventually end up in Telluride for the Night.  Then finally on Monday, I would head back over Last Dollar Road, North to Montrose, drop off my rental, get my car back, and drive home.

There was one more important detail coming into this trip.  After hearing a lot about rental lenses from friends of mine, I decided to give it a try for myself.  I did some research and decided to go the online route.  I rented a Nikon 24-70mm F/2.8 AF-S VR from lensrentals.com.  Everyone always says to spend your money on ‘glass’ and not the camera body itself.  So in that spirit, I rented one of the best lenses on the market for the weekend.  It is actually a pretty straight forward process.  You place your order online, and they ship the lens to you via FedEx with a return label inside.  It understandably was packaged very well, ready for the abuse of shipping.  After you are done using it, you put it back in the same packaging, slap the shipping label on the box, and drop it off at any FedEx location.  I think the four day rental cost my about $140.  Considering that the lens itself costs about $2400 new, and I was planning on taking hundreds of shots, it was well worth it.

That is enough for tonight.  In the next several posts, I will go through each leg of the trip in greater depth.  Thanks for reading.