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Originally Posted by B_and_D
Great pictures, always appreciate when you post your pictures.
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Glad you liked them...stay tuned as I have many more coming over the next few weeks. Before I post a photo I always do a bit of "tweaking" in Photoshop...tasks like adjust the "levels" so that darkest pixel is represented as a pure black, the lightest pixel as a white; get the contrast tuned; fix any skewed horizons because the camera wasn't dead level when the photo was recorded; crop as needed; apply a teensy bit of sharpening to compensate for loss of sharpness in the processing; resize to 800X600 so the image will fit on nearly everyone's monitor; and then save as a JPEG with enough compression that the image loads quickly but not so much compression that JPEG artifacts like posterization appear. None of this changes the reality of the scene but it does greatly help make a "blah" image into a "wow" image. Takes a fair bit of time though...anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes per image so preparing the pictures for just one post can take as much as a couple of hours of work.
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Sounds then like the camping season is pretty much over in the Rockies?
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In the higher elevations of the Colorado Rockies (above 8500 feet), most definitely. Most of the higher elevation Forest Service campgrounds closed for
the season around mid-September. The Pawnee campground featured in this thread has an extremely short season for RV camping....basically July 1st through Sept 5th...with "walk-in" camping allowed a week before and a week after those dates. If the winter is fairly snowy, you could easily be contending with residual snowdrifts in this campground as late as mid July.
It's been snowing pretty regularly for the past month in the higher elevations...snow levels in nearly every storm have been down to around 8000 to 9000 feet. And it's not just the campgrounds where snow would be a concern...nearly every storm has already been causing snowpack/icy conditions on the passes so towing across the mountains gets pretty iffy after mid September.
For planning purposes, July 1st through late August is the only "safe" period for higher elevation camping. And even that period is subject to extra cold storms...on
Aug 28th I woke up to deal with three inches of snow in my campsite 
...and I was camping at a relatively low 9000 feet. As that was my campground departure day, it was
not fun dealing with
lots of sloppy cold slush while packing up...I needed thick gloves, a wool hat, and a parka to stay warm. But being the experienced Colorado camper, I came properly prepared for those conditions and had plenty of warm clothing with me.
