This is Crestone, part III: Botany nerd edition

 I went for a little sunset stroll this evening...

The houses near Crestone are mostly in a narrow strip of Pinyon/Juniper woodland, that runs from the foot of the Sangres to the mostly treeless floor of the San Luis Valley to the west.

Pinyon/Juniper woodland occupies large amounts of the American southwest and Great Basin--particularly high desert areas that get just enough moisture to sustain trees at all.

Here are our two protaganists: the darker, lusher-looking tree on the right is a Pinyon, and the lighter colored tree with shaggier bark on the left is the Juniper.

 

Kansans, the Juniper might look like a scrubbier version of our Red Cedar (which, I believe, is actually botanically a Juniper, not a Cedar.)

I headed up through a "green belt" of public land that ran about a 1/2 mile toward the mountains, through spectacular P/J woodlands. I love this gnarly old Juniper:

On the return, I headed down Spanish Creek for a ways. Riparian zones in P/J Woodland offer enough additional water to sustain other species, including deciduous, especially Cottonwood in the SW US. At first I saw only Aspen here, but came on some nice big Cottonwoods in a bit, too.

It was almost sunset.

Here's a good view of the transition from the P/J woodland (behind the cleared lot), to the treeless San Luis Valley in the background.

Kit Carson Peak in evening light, through the P/J woodland.

Finally, looking west to the San Luis Valley. The solar panels sticking up over the trees are on my loft apartment. If you look real carefully, you can see a line of golden deciduous trees running into the horizon behind that. You know what that means, right? That's the riparian zone of Spanish Creek. Most of these creeks from the western Sangres don't actually flow into any river: the San Luis Valley is so arid that they just eventually run dry somewhere downstream. (The Great Sand Dunes are only about ten miles south of here, after all. The San Luis Valley is high desert.)