It’s Tuesday, November 15, 2005 around 10:00 a.m. I have just finished my morning cup of French Roast coffee and have read the Wall Street Journal. I have now driven over to the Boulder County Fair Grounds, close to where the weekend Farmer’s Market is held. I want to shoot some pictures of Long's Peak for possible use in a winter issue of Colorado Magazine Online.   I selected this spot because it provides a good view of the mountain.

The mountain is covered with fresh snow and the sky is a clear Colorado blue. The mountain's peak is hugged by a misty white veil. A perfect setting for my photos.

I stopped on the road leading into the Fair Grounds to photograph a magnificent Sparrow Hawk that I noticed fly into a tree as I rounded a corner. I followed it and got some good shots, before the hawk got nervous and flew away, as I moved in for a closer shot.

I then found a good shooting position, near the fence so I could brace against it to shoot some zoom shots, since I had not brought a tripod.

I noticed a small black flying object moving from left to right, (south to north) - across the west face of Long’s Peak, as I was setting up my shot. However, I assumed it was an airplane taking off from nearby Vance Brand Airport and didn’t pay any attention to it. As I was shooting, I again noticed the craft flying around the northwest side of the mountain, but, I was still focused on getting a good picture of the mountain and did not even notice the craft’s flight pattern. Too bad, because if I had taken time to look at it and had zoomed in on with my telephoto capability, I would have seen that it was not an airplane and I could have switched my digital camera into its video mode and captured some rare footage of the craft in flight. But no, I was busy shooting a picture of Long’s Peak because it was such a perfect day to get those shots. So, I didn’t even give a second look to the black object. Except, I knew I didn’t want it in my picture.

It wasn’t until I got back to my office and placed the my 2-gigabyte microdrive into the memory slot on my computer and took a look at my shots, that I noticed the pesky black object had slipped into a couple of my pictures. So, I just zoomed in on the object and enlarged it as much as I could - to take a look at it and find out what type airplane it was. But, much to my surprise and excitement, it wasn’t an airplane! It had a disk or saucer shape. In my mind, that could mean only one thing - I had inadvertently photographed, what looked to me like a UFO!

What should I do with the photo? I made up a composite .jpg with the photos and a close up and emailed it to some of my friends. Then I contacted a couple of Colorado newspaper editors, who said send the pictures, but indicated little curiosity and probably a lot of doubt about what I said I had photographed. One newspaper emailed me back to tell me they were not going to publish the photos and another paper’s science editor laughed, when I told her what I had. But, she said send the pictures.
I asked her to let me know if the paper published the story, but I have heard nothing back, yet. I have heard about another sighting by several members of a sheriff’s office in Denver.

So, I decided, instead of taking a lot of time to send the photos to other media, I would just publish the story in Colorado Magazine Online...even though it’s a little out of the magazine’s normal editorial scope.

Now, it’s up to the readers of the magazine to decide for themselves, what they are looking at. Is it an extraterrestrial space craft or some secret government craft... or what?

Meanwhile, I’ll go on kicking myself for not having taken time to look at the black flying object. I guarantee you, I’ll be looking up from now on ...after the fact.

I have driven by and looked at Long’s Peak several times since my ignored sighting, but so far I’ve seen nothing but beautiful blue Colorado skies above the mountain.