Crested Butte Wildflowers (and Scenery in General)

I mentioned in an earlier post that Crested Butte is the "official wildflower capital of Colorado". And yet you haven't really seen too much evidence of that in pictures from my previous two posts. That's because I've been saving those photos up for this post. This place really does deserve it's nickname. When you look around you think it actually looks staged - like some nature-loving lunatic had to have gone running around throughout the whole place with buckets and buckets of wildflower seeds, tossing them haphazardly everywhere. There should be more weeds! Where are all of the weeds? Everywhere else I've ever gone there are a few flowers nestled in loads of weeds and shrubby looking things. Not so here. I'm still baffled by it. You should go to this place.

Have a look:

This is the road we took to get home - Kebler Pass. It's closed much of the year. I decided that this drive is one of the most scenic I've taken in Colorado so far. And that's saying something because Mr X and I have done a really good job wandering about this state since we moved here.

It was like a sea of flowers nearly everywhere we looked.

Feel free to identify these flowers in the comments area as I don't know the names of most of them.

I took this photo because you can see white-capped mountains in the background, behind the aspens, and I thought it was pretty.

Wild Roses are all over the place.

Maybe these little blue ones are Blue Flax Flowers....

Are these Mertensia flowers?

These are Lupine.

 

I took lots of pictures of the aspens because the forests of these trees are so spectacular throughout Kebler Pass - the most impressive I've seen yet. I wish you could see them in person.

These might be Fairy Trumpets but I'm not entirely sure...

These were the first Columbines I've seen of the season so far. They are such a unique looking flower. I have some growing in my yard. When I did research on them I found out that they thrive in "poor soil", which I found surprising and interesting.

This particular version of the Columbine is the State Flower. The ones that I have in my yard are all yellow and deep purple.

Crescent Milkvetch Flowers? Chainpods? I don't know...

Yellow Banners maybe?

Indian Paintbrush. Or Scarlett Paintbrush. Or Rosy Paintbrush. They kind of all look somewhat similar to me.

I believe these are called Avalanche Lilies.

More Columbine Flowers, an array of colors.

Mertensia again?

More Lupine.