Just like at home, looking at the snow-capped mountains gave us a sense of place and I loved to get photos of it. We were north of Pikes Peak, and it' was a bit confusing at first, to know that Red Mountain was about half as tall, and yet from Garden of the Gods it seemed taller.

I went for the colors of a gray winter day, and showed how I deal with dark winter days and no energy: I let it be part of a bigger picture. I was glad the Cosmic stuff was the right colors, because the symbolism of it just fell into place for me. ;)

We knew ahead of our trip that a cold front would make Thursday a gray day, and we waited until 10 am to visit the park. The sun was trying to show through the clouds without success, and we didn't explore much. We visited the Trading Post and had some ice cream.

The moose belong here. I love your focal points/eye candy within the composition.

Wow. Thank you so much! This will be a wonderful adventure for me.

Thanks for the challenge. I enjoyed having a clear idea of what I wanted the page to be about that was not negotiable and no clue what ingredients I'd use. I grabbed the first template the search engine found in my folders and started deleting stuff. :D Papers white base page, paper for color &...

We knew I'd pay for getting to 14,000 feet and walking across the parking lot to the visitor center. There was no way I could explore any of the amazing exhibits. I managed a photo of the mine. but I said no to a young couple that expected me to take their souvenir photo.

Thanks for the challenge. Fun as always. My deer is at the New Years Eve party and the photos on the wall are my future? It is not easy to make a cloven hoof hold the eggnog. :D

In our wildest dreams we didn't think we'd be able to get to the 14,115 ft summit of Pikes Peak. Then we did. We both expected to have to turn around long before the top. We appreciated the lower part of the drive more, as we were thinking each new scenic view might be our last.

Thanks for this inspiration. I had a fun day and this was a wonderful challenge. I've downloaded some but mostly never used freebies! I thought you would prefer me to buy stuff. :D

I made us stop a lot, and sometimes in the road, to get a photo of the switchbacks we had already ascended. It wasn't just on Pike's Peak Highway, but whenever we took crazy steep roads without guardrails. I seemed to have a special passion and lifelong wonderment about them.

Thanks for the challenge! I have taken tons of closeups I never use. :D

If the leaves are brown but still on the trees, then maybe that's fall color, even in January. And during the golden hour, the sunlit browns look more like golds. We don't see that 100 miles north of Manitou Springs, and we don't have pin oak trees. It was a beautiful day with plentiful sunshine.

Thanks for the challenge, Ona. I wanted a natural texture to dominate, and I think my photo had that. Too much of it, actually, so I used Rachel's paper as a vellum to soften part of it, and I added tons of stuff to get it to (I hope) where you wanted. I didn't cover the page but you will find...

Whenever I saw signs that had no message, I would take photos and imagine that sooner or later I'd think of where they should go and what they should say. The sign was in a wonderful wilderness setting, so I put a colorful summer flower art card on it and added the dark-eyed juncos.

;) Thanks for the challenge. A word I had only ever associated with my drivers license and other administrative chores.

When we made a point of getting out in January, we learned we were happier. At times it seemed like everything would be drab and covered with snow, but we found there were so many signs of life throughout the winter. We knew we needed to see our world and it renewed us.

Thanks for the challenge Gina and Christa! I liked how Christa used the calendar and month wordart, so I picked https://oscraps.com/community/media/march-2023.375601/ and this is my page

We got to Manitou Springs for lunch on New Year's Eve and they had our room ready before noon. We had visited part of Garden of the Gods a year earlier, and for this trip we planned to visit the park several times over the week and drive to Pikes Peak summit since could get oxygen.