Thanks CuriousMike! I've played around with a lot of pretty interesting programs like RawTherapee and PhotoScape, but ultimately ended up doing most of my editing with Lightroom. I often make heavy use of "clarity" and "vibrance", but also the shadows, lights/darks/whites/blacks depending on the particular image. Sometimes it's rather excessive editing, which you really see if you are a pixel-peeper.
To speak specifically to the colors, I think most of that can be attributed to the " vibrance" feature. It isn't totally unlike saturation, but IMO does a nicer job of it. Pull the slider too far and you get an image that just looks fake and really bad. I'm glad to see the positive reaction to mine :-D