Mount Falcon Park

I actually took all of these pictures a couple of days ago when I was celebrating my family's belated Mother's Day for my Mom. My excuse is simple, we spent the day in the Celestial Seasonings factory, as seen in my other post, and then drove home. The clouds started thundering and a light rain came down, which stopped us again from taking the hike that my Mom had been wanting as her gift. Then it stopped, to which we got the idea to grab out gear and get our hiking as soon as possible. That's when I took these pictures, which was approximately seven at night. We got back when the sun was down, I needed to give them some quick touch-ups, and then I finally got around to posting them. So, there's my explanation of why this is late.

Mount Falcon Park

~-=[Official Website]=-~

So this first photograph is actually not of the park that my family hiked around, but just from the drive up! I was trying out my camera to see how well it could quickly take a snap-shot of the road while we drove and to see how the picture came out. I did a bit of editing in the car and came up with this in a matter of seconds. I just wanted to make it to have something to post to Instagram for the day, I honestly had no idea that we would be visiting the park. Anyway, thought I would include it because I do think the picture came out nice for something I made in a matter of minutes.

The Meadow looking towards US-285

The Castle Trail
So the first trail you get on leads down from the parking lot into a small overlook that shows the large highway, US-285. It is from up here that you can see magnificent meadows running down the slopes, several mountain ranges, and even a bit of the park that burned up in a fire in the years past (nothing recent). I took a few photographs from up here.

For reference, none of these photographs are actually edited because I did not feel like putting the time into it. Still, the colors are amazing!

Panorama Shot of the Meadow looking towards US-285 with the Sunset

After getting past this opening, there are several options to choose from of which way to go. However, since the sun was setting over the other side of the mountains very quickly, we decided to head straight for the Castle. So down another path we went, and then up on top of a hill to where there is now the outline of the house. Basically, a fire broke out and a stone house burnt to the ground, leaving only a few of the stones left. The ruins are known as the Castle ruins, but the actual name is the Walker Home Ruins, which is of course named after the family that owned the house.

The Meadows

A view from the Castle

So here's a true story, one of the requests for all the visitors of the Castle is that they don't step on the ruins. Obviously, the park service does not want the ruins to crumble to a worse state than the fire already left them, preserving them for others to see what a lightning bolt can do. And yet there was this family walking around on top of the ruins, dancing on the stones when we got there. My Mom took a picture of them on the other side of the fence and with the sign that says to stay off the ruins. I sometimes can't believe people.

A view from the Backside of the Meadows

The Meadow Trail
After seeing the castle, we had two choices of trails to take. One was to continue on the castle trail, which leads down and into the town of Morrison. We decided not to take this trail because the hike back up would be too harder with the sun was dropping in the distance. The other path was to cut across a meadow.

This trail actually does not walk through the meadows exactly, but more around them. To our left was a tree-line and to our right was a beautiful, open field where we could view the sun slowly setting in the distance. They make it pretty clear that they do not want people walking through the meadows, for most of the trail had wooden logs lining both sides of the path.

Where the Meadow Trail meets the Old Ute Trail

We followed this trail back onto another mountain and took a small trail that walks around the top called the Old Ute Trail.  I snapped this photograph right before we started hiking around the mountain, trying to capture the sunlight as it shined through the forest and onto the path. It came out decently.

It was a little bit more of a climb than what we had been doing up until now, but nothing too hard. About half-way around the Old Ute Trail (which is not saying much, the trail is approximately half a mile long), there is a split in the path and you can continue back onto another small loop called Devil's Elbow Trail. We thought about going down this path, but do to falling light levels and a few other reasons we decided to skip it this time around and just turn back. The path then quickly met up with the place where we started the trail and from there we were given two more options, continue back on the flat, slightly boring Meadow Trail patch that we had not been on, or start climbing upwards towards the top of the mountain. Both trails would lead us eventually back to the start, so you can imagine our option was to head for the views and take a slightly longer path up the mountainside.

The Tower Trail
Unlike any of the previous trails, the Tower Trail actually was a real hike up a mountain. I had to give my Mom my hiking pole so that she could use it to help herself get up the mountain, which was fine by me because I did not really need it. Anyway, we started climbing up the twisting path towards the top of the tower.

A Deer on the Way Up	From the Top of the Tower Trail

As we got closer to the top of the mountain, we spotted a deer that was grazing. She did not seem to mind us too much, looking up and seeing what we were all doing before going back to grazing on the grass. We stayed, took a few pictures, and then continued up a bit farther. After that we were at the top of the Tower Trail, which has a nice little structure that lets you see just barely above the tops of the trees. I looked out onto the horizon and snapped another quick picture. So far, that has been my favorite picture from this trip.

From there we started the hike back to the car, only making one more stop at the Eagle Eye Shelter. It was pretty dark at this point, so my photographs were starting to only show the mountain's shadow in the background along with some deep blue clouds. We got back to the car and my Mom declared this a good hike for Mother's Day!