Rocky Mountain National Park

Wednesday - 30 June 2004 - 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