Teal Campground, north of Pagosa Springs, Colorado is nestled among tall ponderosa pines on the west side of Williams Creek Reservoir. The drive into the campground is long and, after the pavement ends, is on forest service roads, the conditions of which are highly variable. During my visit, some sections were relatively good, while most sections were rocky, bouncy, pot holed and washboarded.
The setting for the campground is attractive with good views of mountains across the reservoir and in other directions. The campsites are available on first come basis and a fee is required. With my National Parks Senior Pass, I only paid $11/night. A number of campers were already there, but I was fortunate to find a perfect site for my Sportsmobile.
There are a couple of other campsites just up the road and I was uncertain about whether I wanted to stay here or in one of the other two campgrounds. Before I paid for my site, I walked around and found the camp host in his pickup truck talking to other campers. He was very adamant that no smoking was allowed in any outdoors area nor in his “very clean” restrooms. Fortunately, I am not a smoker and I did not want to use the restrooms during the pandemic anyway. The host told me that the other campsites usually had vacancies, unless Teal was full, but one site, Palisades, at the end of the road, was only for those with horses.
I decided to stay at Teal for at least one night and check out the other sites and Williams Creek hiking trail from Palisades the next day.
After lunch, I set out to check out the area for possible photo locations, testing compositions with my iPhone.
Some of the big pines had interesting features, but the one above is my favorite.
The ground under the pines was covered with fallen needles and pine cones. I thought the stray section of old rusty barb wire among these made for an interesting photo.
I found a number of boulders scattered around in the grassy area near the reservoir that might make good foreground objects at sunset.
It was an increasingly cloudy afternoon and I began to think that there would be no golden hour at sunset today.
I think I found some good possible compositions and the clouds will be great to have. Now I just need to have golden hour light to make these better.
Aren’t those clouds magnificent?
There were numerous varieties of wildflowers around the open grassy area surrounding the campground, too.
Now I just need to have an early dinner, prepare my DSLR gear and wait for sunset.
Until then,
Ken