Day 13 - Rocky Mountain National Park or "I've never been so high in my life"

This morning started off early. I got up and finished uploading a bunch of pics from yesterday. I had hoped to get a post out, but as you can see that didn't happen till this evening. We had breakfast with the Greenfield's and conversed for a little while before I had to start pushing to get on the road. However that wasn't until after I tried to breathe my coffee and nearly spit out a whole mouth full on the entire table. I was able to choke it back, but the downside to that was my choking for about five minutes. It was pretty hilarious.

But back to the real story. We left around 10 o'clock, a little later than intended, but still a decent hour. It wasn't far up I-25 before we started back west. Pretty much as soon as we shifted directions we began to gain altitude. The Roosevelt National Forest was pretty. I had been wondering if the Rockies were really that rocky. Rest assured, they are.

Estes Park was pretty cool. It's the kind of place I could see myself spending summers at.

Now you may notice that little black dot. It's in all my pictures. I'm not too happy about it. Honestly I'm really angry. I'm hoping that once I take some more time (I should say Rebecca takes some more time) to figure it out it can be fixed. Hopefully.

Just after Estes Park we entered Rocky Mountain National Park.

We weren't even two miles in when we encountered a herd of Elk roaming around in the lowlands.

There was one male running the show and another would be suitor straggling behind. One of the rangers stopped to take some pictures with us and told us the term for it, but I can't remember. Dad might.

After this we ran up to Hidden Valley for a bathroom break. There's a little creek that runs through that I was diggin'.

Then I met a new friend!

His name is Barry

It was after this point that Dad got a little uncomfortable with the whole scene. You see he isn't a big fan of heights and we just kept going higher and higher while the drops got closer and closer. At Many Parks Curve I got out and got some great pics. I'm really hoping that my attempt at a panoramic turns out, but I have to spend some time on that one.

Now while I was out gallivanting along the edge, Dad was making sure no one stole the car.

The roads were just as beautiful as the vistas.

The next stop was at Forest Canyon. On the way up we hit a short of milestone. I can say with certainty I'd never been that high before.

Once we got up to the Forest Canyon view point, wow. Spectacular! It was so stunning that Dad even had to get out and have a  closer looker.

Now to give you a better idea of how nerve racking some of this driving was take a look at this shot where the road winds around and then seems to drop off entirely (even I'll admit, it was a steep drop).

Okay I'm going to pick up the pace a little bit with this post. Next major thing we saw was Lava Cliffs.

Here we have a shot of Dad driving, almost like he's flying a helicopter.

Just before the Gore Range look out we hit the highest point of our trip.

The view was just amazing, but there was one thing that seemed to be missing - snow! The majority of these peaks are over 14,000 feet high and there was only the occasional spec of snow left. It must get a lot hotter here than I would have guessed. As a frame of reference for all you Washingtonians out there, Mt Rainier is 14,411 and can you remember the last time you saw it without any snow?

We had lunch up at the Alpine Visitors Center (elevation 11,796). Didn't take any pictures here because the place was tore up due to construction. We were actually about to find that the whole west side of the park was under construction along the roadway for repaving. Now we were going slow to begin with, about 25 mph, but we came to a grinding halt and ended up averaging probably 10 mph for the majority of the road down. Most of that was because they had pilot cars set up and we spent a lot of time waiting.

I really thought I got some pictures of the Colorado River at this point, apparently not. I've seen the Colorado before, at Hoover Dam, but this was nothing like that. It's a small windy river that contrasts beautifully with the surrounding landscape. I'm really kickin' myself about this now.

When it was all said and done we'd spent 6 hours traveling about 70 miles. By far the slowest traveling day so we had to make up for it a bit. We cruised for while through north-central Colorado. The landscape seemed to change every time I looked up.

After a little while we decided to call it quits in Craig, CO where I am currently sitting at a desk in our hotel room writing this post for you. Tomorrow should be interesting. We're going to start off by having the brakes double checked, there was a slight noise and it's better to be safe than sorry. We're also staying at a place that happens to be adjacent to a dealer so they should be able to help us out. Then it's off to Dinosaur National Monument, Timpanogos Caves and Salt Lake City, UT!

Phew, I can't believe I'm now all caught up on blogging! YAY!!!!!