Living Rootless: Colorado: Roxborough State Park

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Colorado: Roxborough State Park

Larkspur in Roxborough State Park, Colorado. May 2016.

May in Colorado meant spring flowers to me.

I looked up a list of best places to see wildflowers in May, and came up with a short list of places that my sister, Murphy, and I might check out in a day's easy commute from Longmont.

Roxborough State Park was first on the list!

Murphy and one of our nephews met up with another nephew and his wife. We packed our lunches to eat outdoors.

It was brisk and sunny.

We walked two trails.

Here's a snip of one in the video below:

High, low, and in between at Roxborough - there was much to grab our attention.

We saw dead critters: Fox, snake, mouse. You can see these in the slideshow at the end of this post.

Some of us were more interested in a thing than others of us. One of my nephews and I could barely tear ourselves away from the American burying beetles (believed to be near extinction) that worked and worked over a clump of organic material toward some unknown end. Flies of various brands flitted about the stage. A video below:

Meanwhile, a gobsmacking event was occurring up the trail.

My niece and another nephew saw this dead mouse on the trail and actually witnessed a beetle attempt to carry the dead mouse on its back and, MY GOD, THEY DIDN'T TAKE A PICTURE. By the time Nephew #1 and I arrived on the scene, the beetle had given up and moved on. Niece and Nephew #2 tried to make up for their lapse by offering to take me to see two halves of a dead rattlesnake they'd encountered in the parking lot.

Dead mouse at Roxborough State Park, Colorado. May 2016.

Moving our eyes from the minute to the grand, we admired mammoth slabs of red rock that jutted away and up from lush green fields massed with yellow wildflowers.