Wildflowers

With all of our rain the Hills are green and we are seeing a fantastic array of wildflowers this spring.  Getting too them with the weather has been interesting, but the added effect of raindrops on the petals really give photos of them pop.  Here are a couple of shots from the past couple of days.

To the right is a wild rose covered in raindrops.

Below are another rose with just the bud and a photo of a stalk of Beard Tongue.

June Sunrise_9906

June Sunrise_9906, originally uploaded by Sue Gannaway.

A June sunrise, this morning up at 4:30. A calm morning with a little bit of cloud cover painted the sky east of Spearfish.

Black Hills morning

One of my favorite places in Custer State Park is the Blue Bell Campground area.  Our family has stayed there many times in the last 20 years and we returned this weekend for Memorial Day.  There are several lookouts near the campground adjacent to Mt. Coolidge.  Saturday morning I was awake at 5:30 and decided to check out several of the overlooks.  What was supposed to be a cloudy, dreary day actually started out with a stunningly beautiful morning. 

Here the lifting clouds are colored by the rising sun:

Looking off to the north side of the park after the clouds had cleared: