More Las Vegas

I've had the following pictures since we were in Las Vegas months ago, but never got around to posting them. That said, I figured now would be a good time to put them up here,

Most were taken when we took a day trip up to the Mora Valley, an area a bit to the east of Las Vegas. The area consists of lush green valleys bordered by rolling hills rising to majestic peaks, my favorite kind of landscape.

As we were driving along, I took pictures through the window, so some of these are less than sharp, but I loved the shots, so here they are.

One of the many deserted cabins we see in New Mexico.

Open landscape.
Remember to click on any photo for a larger version.

As we drove higher into the mountains,
the landscape changed.
These little purple flowers were everywhere.

After taking off on a national forest road,
we came onto this area,
which has a ton of open campsites.

Here's another campsite.
This is drycamping with no facilities,
but since we are self contained,
this would be ideal for us.
We're filing this location away for warmer weather.

One more shot,
you can see the fire ring in the foreground.

We took a short walk into the woods
and found this little creek.

The temperature was a mild 75 degrees.
Birds and butterflies were everywhere.

When I took this picture,
I thought I was only taking one butterfly.
It wasn't until I looked at it on the computer
that I saw the second one.

One more shot of flowers under the trees

And of course there were bunches of squirrels
(or chipmunks or something . . .)

A bit further up the road,
the landscape changed once again.

A close up of these cliffs.
The light doesn't show as well in the photo,
but they were stunning.

As we headed for home, this shot caught my eye.
We had to do a quick U-Turn to get this shot,
can you see what got our attention?

In case you couldn't make it out,
here's a closeup.

Just a few more shots
of the amazing new Mexico sky.

I think I've posted this photo before,
but it belongs in this sequence,
The sunflowers were everywhere.
Be sure to blow this one up,
it looks best at a higher resolution.

As always