Most of the times I run this particular bunch of wing barrels, I travel in a clockwise direction. As a result, we're almost always going through the Seminoes in the dark (hence the lion encounter last week).

But for all five days of check station at the beginning of this month, I kept hearing about how wonderful the fall colours were. And how the rain on Thursday had already caused a lot of leaves to fall.

So today, as we made the final collection for sage grouse wings, we changed direction. Ran counter-clockwise.

And ran the Seminoes in daylight.

Turned out to be an excellent idea.

Things weren't quite as grand and colourful as last year. Trees weren't quite so synchronized in their changes. Many of the cottonwoods had shed a large portion of their leaves, taking out much of the copperish reds, and quite a few aspens were still mostly green.

But the golds were there.

On the south side of the mountains,

and on the north.

Even the river banks were splashed with gold.

There was gold peeking out of canyons

and rising out of arroyos.

And later, as we headed back out into the sagebrush steppe, the land of dull greys, browns and dusty greens,

There were flashes of fiery colour, hiding in the rocks.