1993/07 Rockies trip - Rocky Mountain |
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We had a long drive that day, east across the Sangre de Cristo range, and then north along the Front Range of the Rockies. This last bit was fast, freeway driving, going through Colorado's major cities, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Denver.
We stopped near Louisville, just north of Denver, for the engine to cool and for us to eat lunch, and were surprised at how bad the pollution is there. I expected it to be bad looking toward Denver, but even the mountains were blotted out, a lot worse than I've seen it before.
From there, it is a couple of hours drive to Estes Park, climbing to 9000ft, way above the pollution. I called ahead to reserve a campsite, and we were able to get into the same campground that we used two years ago, close to Rocky Mountain park, and on the bank of the Big Thompson River. We spent a while looking around the Estes Park shops, and then drove up to Bear Lake and wandered around the lake in the twilight.
Friday July 16th
This was our last real day of vacation, and we spent it driving over Trail Ridge Road, stopping to play in the snow, and look at mountains, marmots, flowers, and elk. Although warm in Estes, it was, as usual, cold and windy up at 12000ft.
You don't rush around much at that altitude, but I got stopped for speeding by the park police on the way down the mountain. It's tough to estimate speed when you're going downhill without a speedometer, but I said I was concentrating on the 
scenery and just got a warning. 
We continued on to Grand Lake, which is a real party town, and ate lunch in the Scandinavian Coffee Shop, which looked a little strange, obviously squeezed into what had been somebody's summer cottage, but they served good food. 
On the way back, we went slowly, to avoid the same policeman, and were looking out for the remaining animals on Edna's list, beaver, raccoons, and skunks. We'd seen plenty of dead coons and skunks by the roadside, but for some reason, they didn't count. A few days before they'd arrived we'd also had a raccoon emptying our garbage all over the front yard in broad daylight, but she hadn't seen that one either.
However, we stopped at the beaver ponds on our way back to Estes Park, and the beaver were out splashing around in one of the ponds, so tick another one off. 
We also went to the landslide site, where the dam gave way a few years back. Just about all the trees that survived the landslide winds have now died due to suffocation from the debris, so the area looks even more stark than it did before. Sometimes, geological change is very fast, especially in the mountains.
Just downstream from the slide are the bighorn meadows, where the sheep come down to
drink. We could see them high on the cliffs overlooking the meadows, but none came down to be photographed by the hordes of onlookers.
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