Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: interestingness#376

On our way north to Kalispell from our few days in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, we pulled off the road at this viewpoint to enjoy the distant Mission Mountains - and (for me) the beautiful Teasels growing near the fence : ) Funny how an image can look OK at midnight, but look too busy/messy next morning in daylight, lol. Oh, well, I still want it for my US holiday set. The other day, I noticed tiny snowflake icons on the weather forecast chart for this coming week, so I went out on three days to grab a few photos just in case the forecast turned out to be right. A good thing I did this, as my vehicle has "malfunctioned" and it will have to go in for repair, plus a major service that I'm still a bit early for, but don't want to have to be without my car twice.

It was such a thrill last summer to botanize an area we'd never been to before - Bentz Lake Natural area, north west of Calgary! I'd never seen a Yellow Pondlily before, either, and these wildflowers are just so gorgeous.

I got the chance to gaze deeply into a gorgeous black Hollyhock flower at the Reader Rock Garden a few days ago. What a sight to see - always love to do this! Reminds me of fireworks or a little windmill. What amazing magic there is to be found by simpy "looking" AND "seeing" : ) Just got home about half an hour ago, from a full day of hiking on the southeastern edge of Kananaskis, at Marsden Creek. Mainly uphill climbing, until we turned around, of course. This was the second time some of us had been there, to botanize the area. It was another case of mushroom heaven for a couple of us - so many everywhere, though many were the same. Did get a few different ones, though, which will hopefully turn out sharp enough, but just too tired to download them from my camera right now. The return half of the hike was in the rain - we had watched as the clouds gradually came lower down and finally turned into rain. Fortunately, we were able to take most of our photos in time, though the light was not good. Oh, and we had a major storm early this morning, around 2:00 a.m., with thunder, lightning, horribly wild winds and torrential rain, so I wasn't even sure if we would still go on this hike. However, six of us brave souls decided to go : ) On the way home, we stopped for coffee/hot chocolate, to which we were treated - thanks, David! It sure felt good after all our exercise! Yummy!

I was so disappointed a few days ago when I went to Bowness Park to see if the small, (possibly hybrid) Silver Maple tree had turned red yet. We don't have the glorious reds of fall here in Calgary, but I was told about this single tree last year and managed to get a few photos of the vivid red leaves. However, this fall, almost every leaf is badly damaged, plus they had not yet reached full colour. These were about the only two leaves fit to be photographed : (