Hi Chris
I actually do;
after importing, flagging & meta tagging each shot in lightroom I do 99% of my work in the develop module and my initial routine goes as follows:
1- (I consider this to be most important) correct and adjust perspective and distortions and crop accordingly
2- correct white balance
3- correct exposure (highlights, shadows, etc)
4- saturate, desaturate, vibrance, or convert to BW
5- clarity and contrast
6- sharpness & noise reduction
at this point the overall look of the image is established whether I want a sharp crisp image or a soft relaxed look,
from here I go to refining and fine tuning which means anything from a graduated filter to a brush or manuplitating colors in HSL module, if you take a look at some of the shots where the sky is a vivid blue that is where I used the graduated filter to accomplish the rich color and contrast in the cloud details.
Sometimes I will launch photoshop from lightroom for further work if needed ie; HDR and such (one of the images you saw is HDR) but 90% of the time I'm using lightroom to make most of those images look the way they do, roughly in the process I outlined.
