Borrowed some of your suggestions about cropping and brightening colors. So this is the first edit. It’s probably similar to your #1, too. But I pushed all the colors about +20% in HSL esp. on Luminance/Saturation. I also ran it through a filter but I don’t recall which. The filter is in Color FX Pro, Tonal Contrast +25% for a bit of additional pop, if memory serves.
1/500s @ f5.6 ISO 200 on Nikon D3000 @ 65mm on 55mm~200mm Zoom Lens