The last leaves, for real this time

After seeing how dry and dead the trees were after our early October cold spell, I wasn't sure we'd be able to find pretty ones anywhere! But we had one more day of projected good weather, and Goldie and Teddy were sad they'd missed our other trip up the canyon, so I cancelled school for the afternoon and the middle children and I went out looking for Fall. The mountains appeared mostly bare and dull from our house, but the day was warm, and we had a picnic lunch, which always does wonders for the collective mood.

We went up Big Cottonwood Canyon to one of our usual spots (we'd had a fun time playing Family there last year, which the children remembered fondly) but everything was dead there. Dead and bare. Then as we drove back down to the mouth of the canyon, we saw one little area that was beautiful flaming orange. And after a bit of trouble trying to find the turn-off, and navigate around a port-a-potty truck packing things up for the season, and so forth…we got there!

The lady we met (she was the "campground host") in the picnic area said she had been all up and down the canyon and this was the very last spot with colored leaves still on the trees. She said the aspens up at the top never even got to turn yellow. I don't know how this spot had managed to escape the worst of the frost!

The view from our picnic table was just lovely. A perfect rainbow of leaves!

Daisy brought her hammock. We are quite experienced hammock-put-uppers by now, you know. We pride ourselves on it. It's lovely to lie in a hammock out in the woods!

Little Goldie-elf.

These red trees were so spectacular!

Do you see that little mound Daisy is patting? It's Marigold! Buried in leaves.

It was lovely and warm—high 60s!—but you could see dark clouds rolling slowly toward us, and they looked stormy. And the wind was coming down the canyon. It made it all even nicer somehow—knowing we were catching the very last dregs of the good weather, and it would be over all too soon.

Daisy and Junie found a wooden "sword" and they were fighting dragons with it. This hammock strap was a very floppy dragon. Rather hard to fight, actually.

Tiny leaf Daisy found!

This tree was my favorite one—so big and spread-out, just right for climbing.

Finally the wind started acting like it was serious, so we packed up our things and fled back home, just ahead of the 20-degree temperature drop that ushered in our coooooold Halloween week (7 degrees! It was 7 degrees one morning!)…after which we have had the most warm and glorious November, so I guess you never know. But hooray for this one warm yellow-orange afternoon, at any rate! I hope we stored up enough of it to last us through the winter days ahead!