I went on a brief 3-day visit to the State of Michoacán in México. The primary purpose was to visit the Monarch Butterfly Reservation as between November-March, they come to this area from Canada and the U.S. I'd been here 6 years ago and was horrified at the change. Whereas before I'd seen 3 million butterflies in one glance, I saw perhaps 3000 on this trip. Too many tourists traipsing through their grounds, too much illegal logging, global warming, who knows? The government has laid down an impressive infrastructure to let people see this marvel of Mother Nature, placing boundaries of areas where you can walk and where you can't, but it is obviously not enough.

The Lake of Zitacuaro, the city of Morelia, the church of Yuriria, Tupacuaro, Santa Clara de Cobre, & Patzcuaro were the main areas we visited, but the state is quite big, it has many mountains with twisty windy little roads, and there are hundreds of picturesque little villages and towns, well worth a visit, but we did wonders in 3 days.

I am missing many photos, but there are other articles about Morelia here on World is Round, so I saw no sense in uploading yet another photo of the Morelia cathedral lit up at night, the market that sells sweets, the clumps of butterflies hanging, like grapes, from the pines, the band shell in Sta. Clara de Cobre, the beautiful town squares in Patzcuaro, etc. etc.

I have used textures in some of my photos. A lot of them I make from my own photos, but others I've downloaded from the Creative Commons in Flickr. I have not given any recognition in the photo itself, but will gladly do so if the author of the texture so wishes.