This trip was originally intended to be my Wyoming State Vacation, and it still will be. However, when you’re going anywhere in Wyoming other than Yellowstone, it just makes sense to fly into Denver, Colorado – especially when you have friends and family on the Colorado Front Range. So the first few days of this trip are a mini-Colorado trip, aimed at seeing a few parts of the state I STILL haven’t seen. But first, a prelude.

Shortly before this trip, I purchased a huge new zoom lens for my Good Camera. Unfortunately, I didn’t try to do anything with it until the evening before my departure. Why is this unfortunate? The new lens is made by a different manufacturer than my camera, so it needs an adapter. Following the instructions, I attached the adapter to the zoom lens (no problem here), then attached the whole shebang to the camera in the same manner I attach lenses made by the camera’s manufacturer (line up the red dots, insert the lens’s butt into the camera’s gaping maw, then rotate a quarter turn and it clicks into place – no problem here, either). I took the assembled beast outside, mounted it on a tripod, and made sure it worked – all was still good. Then I tried to remove the giant zoom lens, in the same manner I detach lenses made by the camera’s manufacturer. It would not come off. I pressed the release button and rotated the other way. It comes loose, acting like it’s going to pop out. But it doesn’t come out. I struggled with the thing on and off for hours. The adapter absolutely will not come out of the camera. Which means, I can’t get my smaller lenses back onto the camera (they came from the camera’s manufacturer, so they don’t need and cannot attach to the adapter). And this zoom lens is so massive and unwieldy that I only intend to use it occasionally, for wildlife photography, and not lug it around for landscape photos. Besides that, when they are together, the lens + camera do not fit in my suitcase. So, with tears in my eyes and Oprah in my heart, I made the difficult decision to leave my Good Camera at home (with the adapter still stuck in it) and bring my Old Cheap-n-Crappy^(TM) camera instead.

Once I hit the road, this decision stung even more when I remembered my first destination was a waterfall – and half the reason I originally bought the Good Camera was that I could never get decent waterfall pics with the Old Cheap-n-Crappy. I was almost hoping that Rifle Falls would be a lame little thing, so I wouldn’t mind getting bad pictures of it. But, Rifle Falls turned out to be one of the most spectacular waterfalls I’ve ever seen. Let’s see how badly the Old Cheap-n-Crappy performed:

I had read in advance that this is a triple waterfall; one could argue (on this day, anyway) that it’s a quintuple waterfall. I was glad to find that the three falls are in parallel, rather than in series. This way, if one waterfall goes out, they don’t all go out (that’s electrical humor). In any event (except the Taylor Swift concert in Denver that I avoided by coming to Rifle), I think it will be useful to assign a name to each of these three falls. Looking at the photograph above, the waterfall on your left is hereby known as “Alice”, the middle one is “Bob”, and the right fall is “Charlie.” Now let’s see if any more of my photos turned out worthwhile:

Well, it is and it isn’t. Y’see, in the very early 20th century, a small hydroelectric power plant was built near the falls. A structure was built at the top of the falls to divert water from Charlie to the hydro plant. Being such a small plant, it didn’t need an awful lot of water. So, this pipe was put in to carry ‘excess’ water to where it would previously have flowed naturally. And now that the power plant is long gone, all of the water that reaches the diversionary structure is ‘excess’ water, so it all goes over the falls just as it would have if the diversion had never been built. It’s just taking a less natural route to get there. Let’s have a closer look:

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The trail then heads down the other side of the waterfalls, somehow becoming even more beautiful:

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From Rifle Falls, I made my way to the Holiday Inn Express in Silt. Yup. There’s a town called Silt, and it’s not far from the towns of Rifle and Parachute. The early settlers of western Colorado seem to have had fun when they were naming places. Stay tuned for more…this trip is just beginning!