Rocky Mountain National Park
Estes Park, Colorado:
Just a quick update tonight to tell you of our strange day. We left Fort
Collins in warm sun, wearing shorts and drove 49 miles to Estes Park to cold
rain and even snow! We took the main drag through Fort Collins - College
Drive - to see more of the town and to drive through the CSU campus. We can
happily report that Fort Collins is even nicer than we had first thought -
they even have a new Whole Foods.
The road to Estes Park is curvy and uphill. We are camped at 7700' feet, and
had barely squeezed into our campsite when the skies opened and we had a
terrible thunder and lightning storm - complete with a downpour. The
campground turned into muddy mess, so we just stayed in for the afternoon.
At about 4:30, we headed into
Rocky
Mountain National Park, just a few miles from Estes Park. (In the case
of Estes Park, a "park" is the same thing as a "cove" in Smoky Mountain
National Park - a meadow.) Rocky Mountain National Park has 78 peaks over
12,000 feet high! It is home to deer, elk, moose, bear, mountain sheep,
coyotes, mountain lions and bobcat - plus countless other small mammals and
birds. We took the Honda up the Trail Ridge Road and ran
into snow! At first, it was just wet flakes, but after a while it was
sticking on the road, rocks and then on the meadows, so we decided that was
enough and we made a "U" turn and headed back down the hill.
Rocky Mountain Roads
It was simply too cloudy and snowy to take any photos of the
mountain scenery. Hopefully, tomorrow the weather will improve as predicted.
We didn't have much luck "finding" wildlife, but we did come across two
groups of three young male deer, just getting their antlers. Very pretty
boys! We spent quite a bit of time at the area where the mountain sheep
gather, but I think they were hunkering down out of the cold, wet weather,
because they were no where to be seen. Just as we came back into town, we
saw about 10 elk hanging around outside a tourist riding stable. Seriously,
it was lucky we even noticed them, with all the horses around!
Young buck
We stopped at the Estes Park Brewery, but
it wasn't very nice and I personally think it is a fire trap, so we left
after DT sampled one of their brewski's. (It was no BudLight, that is for
sure!) We ended up having a snack at a Mexican restaurant before coming
home. It is a stormy, cloudy and cold evening - a perfect evening to be home
with your heated tile floors, watching the Mariners on the satellite.
RV Park:
Spruce Lake RV Park in Estes Park