Sunset to nightfall in the mountains

This is going to be a short blog post, to show you a little of the gondola experience I mentioned in the last one. And also to show you a bit of the top of Mt. Werner where my cousin was married. I took this one from the top of the mountain, looking down. This will give you an idea of how far and how high we went!

We were up in the gondola probably about 10 minutes or so. I'm not afraid of heights in general, but I didn't want to think much about how high we were. Taking photos was a fun distraction, anyway! I took this one out the gondola window.

After my cousin's wedding, I went out on the balcony every hour or so. It's such an amazing view up there, and I wanted to soak it in. According to the web site for the lodge up there, we were at 9080' in elevation.

I wanted to be sure to see the sunset and was lucky enough to catch it. I was also lucky enough to catch the photographer out there! It was just the two of us. She was nice enough to take a series of pics of me with the sunset.

This is a fun opportunity to show that black dress I talked to some of you about. (I'd been excited to find this dress online, and shared my find with a few people.)

The photographer left and I was alone with this sunset! The sky glowed gold for just a moment and I saw this bird-shaped cloud very briefly. It's not too strong to say this was a spiritual experience.

Later in the evening, I got some shots from outside the party, looking in. I like taking photos like this. There's always a warm, inviting glow when you take a picture of a window at night.

Now about this time, somewhere between 9:00 and midnight, it was feeling different out there. Again, I went out alone and had an intense experience.

Here's that same Steamboat sign, with the opposite contrast from before. And look at all the little lights below:

The wind was whipping my hair and skirts around and it was all I could hear out there. I looked down, sure that there were animals roaming around in the trees below. I never saw anything, though. This one is blurry, and I'm going to blame the wind. But as you can see, there were trees. All that darkness is more trees.

To add to the spook factor, the sky was doing some very interesting things. The moon was giving off a glow behind this one break in the clouds.

The moon did eventually pop out at the very end of the night. Even though it's the same moon I see at home, it felt like a special Colorado moon.

It was fun being up there for the late afternoon, to sunset, to twilight, to moonlight. I got to feel like the mysterious lady in black up on a mountain, with the moon and the wind. It felt like I was in a movie, like right before Dracula shows up. 😉

This is a place we passed on the way back to where we were staying. We had some awesome brunch at The Paramount. Just thought I'd include it since I like the look of lighted street signs.

I ended up taking over 300 photos on this one night! That's pretty funny considering that after the wedding I said "I wish I'd taken more photos!" I guess I can never have enough of them. Family wedding photos didn't seem like a big fit with my blog theme, but if any of you like looking at wedding pics, I can send you some.

The next blog post will be of the old downtown area of Steamboat Springs. There are buildings there from the 1800s. And there are plenty of stories about those buildings being haunted online. So, I look forward to sharing some old architecture and more ghost stories!

P.S. ~ You can watch a livestream of the Thunderhead Lodge up where I was. I'm watching it now and seeing a similar night view to what I saw a few weeks ago. I took a look at this site a week after the wedding and saw snow up there! So we really lucked out. No fire or snow! Here's the live camera: 

https://www.steamboat.com/the-mountain/live-cams/thunderhead

(You might have to click on that tiny 'play' button in the bottom right-hand corner to get it going)