The St. Vrain State Park near Longmont, Colorado, features about ten ponds and the wonderful backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.
St. Vrain State Park – In A Colorado Minute (Week 333) [4K]
While the Colorado state park
was named after the St. Vrain River, which flows along its north side,
it’s not the main attraction. Actually, access to the river is a bit of a
challenge. The main attraction of St. Vrain State Park are the ponds
and the wildlife they support, namely birds and fish. It would be
interesting to know why they changed the park’s name, at some point,
from Barbour Ponds to St. Vrain.
St. Vrain State Park encompasses
604 acres of land and 152 acres of water (split up between the ponds and
Blue Heron Reservoir). When I visited this past week, it looked like
they were doing another expansion on the north-west side. Exciting!
Birds
commonly seen in the park are egrets, white pelicans, blue herons,
migrating waterfowls and various birds of prey, including bald eagles.
The St. Vrain ponds are a very popular fishing destination
for a good reason. Not only are the ponds stocked with different fish,
the Colorado Parks Department provides you with excellent information about which fish can be found where. I’m impressed.
There
are two facts about this location I purposely left out of this video:
the noise of close-by Interstate 25 and the large amount of RVs. While
the proximity of the interstate and the excellent amenities for RV
camping make this a prime road trip camping spot,
it wasn’t what I wanted to feature in my nature-focused video. So from
afar, St. Vrain State Park may just look like an RV park with some ponds
to you – but when you get close and allow yourself to get lost in the
beauty of the nature and wildlife here, it’s simply a lovely oasis.
Most
of this video I recorded around Pelican Pond, with additional footage
from Mallard Pond, Bald Eagle Pond, Coot Pond and the St. Vrain River.
At Coot Pond, Scott, Whiskey and I watched the most thrilling sunset
yet… I didn’t include footage of that here because I’ll be sharing a
time-lapse video of the entire sunset with you very soon (maybe next
week already).
There are a few milestones marked with this video:
- It’s the first Moving Postcard published in the 4k/UHD format.
While most of you probably don’t have an UHD monitor yet and might not
be able to enjoy how large and sharp this video can play… you will one
day.
- It’s the first Moving Postcard I edited on Adobe
Premiere Pro (vs. Final Cut Pro 7). I had to switch to be able to work
in 4k/UHD. Since I used Premiere Pro before FCP had become the standard a
decade ago, switching hasn’t been as difficult as I feared. I think I
still have a lot to learn about the color correction aspect. What do you
think? Do the colors and contrast look okay? Whiskey doesn’t look as
red-haired as usual, no?
- Last but not least, this is
the first video location I recorded based on a recommendation by someone
on Google+. Thank you, Bailey! In the last few months, there have been
some exciting developments for me with G+. First, my In A Colorado Minute
Collection became a Featured Collection (and by now has over 28,000
followers), then I was invited into the official Google+ Create
Community – and by now I’ve had several very meaningful exchanges with
people on Google+ that make me want to celebrate those human connections
here as well. (Of course, I will not be fooled by the thought of this
G+ thing being everlasting. I do still remember how YouTube/G+ screwed
me over and permanently deleted all my work and community 4 years ago. I
ain’t no fool.)
The lovely guitar playing in this video is the instrumental version of the song “Memorized” by Josh Woodward. This song is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Thank you again and again and again, Josh!
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| Pelican Pond and Longs Peak St. Vrain State Park, Colorado |
You can look at more photos of the park (and Whiskey splashing in the water) in the In A Colorado Minute 2016 Flickr album and on my blog.