Quite frankly I had forgotten how much processing that particular photo took!
But I wholeheartedly agree with what you said:
“Just try to remember what you saw when you took the shot.”
That’s exactly what I try to do, I visualize how vibrant the colors were, how dark the shadows were, how blue the sky was, etc. Then I try to make it look like what I remember. I think my biggest problem is that my laptop monitor isn’t calibrated properly. It looks all right on my screen, but if I print it, the colors look totally different.