It`s been awhile since I have posted any new photos on my blog site, been super busy with work and have done quite a bit of rock collecting in the past few months. I was hoping we would have a great colorful fall season this year, but boy, it has been a really weird fall so far. We had more rain than the droughty summer last year, but had less color this year, plus cooler weather has come in sooner as well. For some reason, there has been better color up on the hillsides and hilltops, away from water sources, than there has been down in the creek and river valleys, where leaves have in many cases, just simply changed from green to brown. I was driving down to a rock hunting location last week, and spotted two beautiful young maple trees, maybe twenty feet high, side by side, and while one was a gorgeous orange and red mixture of color, the other one, not ten feet away, was still a bright green…I can`t even explain that, both are up on a hilltop in a residential yard right next to the highway. Traditionally, in east central Missouri, we see our trees turn color from green to reds, yellows, and oranges, around the second week of October, but here we now are nearing the end of the month and we still have trees cloaked completely in green, while some others have simply gone from green to brown. 

Two weeks ago, I was driving to work and decided to stop off at Fenton, and shoot the color of the Meramac River bank on the south side of I-44, just west of the 270 interchange, and photograph the color above the river on the west facing bank that rises to the top of a high hill. There is a quarter mile stretch of trees that are usually cloaked in hues of reds and oranges for the most part, with a few yellows sprinkled in as well. I was able to walk down to the edge of the water and there was a neat snag in the water near the bank on my side that lent itself to the art of the scene…

 

…this is a spot that one can even walk across in the hot summer dry months, the water level gets down to knee deep or less. Today, .luckily, I had enough water from bank to bank for a neat reflection….

 

…and the closer I walked to the edge of the water, the better the reflection became….

 

 

 

…and that snag was just in the right spot….

 

 

 

 

..and even looking upstream toward the I-44 bridges, was pretty too, with a fisherman across the water….

 

Last week, Missy and I were out rockhunting once again and as we were driving down to the location, we came upon a side road and a quick glance down that road revealed a small doe, standing at the edge of that side road, in the edge of the brush, intently watching us as we were driving by. I quickly stopped, grabbed my camera, and slowly backed up to see if she was by chance, still there….she was….

 

..she was quite pretty and after a short stare down contest, she turned and jumped into the heavier cover brush…. 

 

…as we were leaving the rockhunting spot a bit later, we drove upon this beautiful reflection in a neat waterhole…