Exploring back roads

This time of year the National Park is pretty crowded, so we find ourselves exploring other areas. This afternoon we took a nice ride on some national forest roads.

The view behind us as we drive in the mountains.

We pulled into one of the campsites in this National Forest Campground to eat our picnic lunch. If you look really closely you can see the nearest camper off in the distance.

A close up of the small flowers seen in the foreground in the previous picture. There were thousands of these tiny bouquets.

Another very interesting tiny flower.

Wildflower colors are amazing.

This black bug makes a great contrast with the white flowers.

He's not too happy to have his picture taken.

Storm clouds are rolling in, chasing us back towards home.

These seeds look like dandelions, but the clumps are about the size of a baseball.

Was getting ready to take a photo of these asters, when this striped grasshopper jumped in.