Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
On Tuesday, we left for the mountains, real mountains. From Longmont to about Lyons, the roads are prairie straight, but from there to Estes Park, Highway 36 became a twisty challenge. I'm sure regulars zoom along, but our giant rented SUV required more care. (The trip was also complicated by a stop for gas, the first time in many months when I had to figure out how to pump liquid fuel and, at first, I could not even open the gas tank opening. Sheesh.)
We arrived in Estes Park a little early for our reserved entry time into RMNP, so we checked out our two-day home, the Discovery Lodge. It is an old-fashioned roadside place, OK enough, but perhaps a bit more "rustic" than we had hoped. (I chided Marianne for negatively judging the place by its cover, but she wasn't wrong.)
Our first challenge was getting to the park entrance. The road through downtown Estes is under massive reconstruction, so we crawled. Not far from clearing in-town construction, we hit the lineup going into the park. The National Park Service has instituted "timed entry" reservations to aid the flow of traffic, but crowds remain and, to make things worse, the entry gates are being rebuilt.
Clearing the gate, we headed up Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved highway in the US. The views were worth the entry hassle. I will refrain from putting too many pictures, just remember that beautiful snow-capped mountains were everywhere.
The Road starts with views of valleys we will try to explore tomorrow. A friendly pika came to visit on one stop. Our only wildlife sighting.
I try to avoid panoramas, because they seldom impress on a small computer screen, and are worthless on phones. Nonetheless, here's a 600-pixel wide thumbnail of an original that is 200 times that. Even the "large" picture the thumbnail clicks to is far less detailed than the original. Anyone need a wall-size version?
Here are a few other scenes - rugged mountains, a towering snowbank, and "lava falls".
We turned around at the (closed) Alpine Visitors Center, just past the 12,183 foot summit of Trail Ridge Road. I think the altitude was getting to us and, besides, how many wonderfully majestic mountains can one experience on a single viewing?
For dinner, we crossed through downtown construction to Sweet Basilico, a restaurant our lodge had recommended. Another "rustic" spot, but the food was surprisingly good. We ate enough to warrant an after-meal walk; not picture-worthy, but the right thing to do.
Back at the lodge, we settled into our normal routines: email, Netflix, YouTube, and photo review. Just at sunset, a flying saucer appeared over the mountains. On my next trip, I need to be a real photographer and remember to be in photo-worthy places in sundown's golden hour.
I did manage to get up at sunrise, but only to drive over to Starbucks for coffee and diary-writing. One quick windshield shot over Estes Park was my photo work for the morning gold.
On Wednesday, we planned to "hike" (= walk). I promise.
This was our day down in the valleys. Entrance via Highway 34 was painless and the timed-entry system really did seem to be working to keep down crowding.
Our first stop was Alluvial Falls. One idea was to see mountain sheep or a moose or two. A few years ago I engaged a photo guide and this area was particularly productive, but we were real photographers that time and out looking very early, the sun had barely risen. Our 10:00am entry was not productive, at least for animals.
Alluvial Falls itself refers to the fan of rock and debris that came from a 1982 flood that sent a wall of water from a failed earthen dam at Lawn Lake, down the aptly-named Roaring River, all the way through Estes Park, stopped only when the water stopped at Estes Lake. Millions of dollars of property were damaged and three people lost their lives. Now, it is a scenic water cataract and smooth trail among the boulders.
Meanwhile, the view on the drive itself was RMNP-special, as we have come to expect.
Our next education came from a visit to the Moraine Park Discovery Center. Here we learned local geology and the source of the rocky hills left behind by glaciers. The Center displays were particularly well done, with understandable explanations of continental drift ( "at speed of fingernail growth") and climate-vs-weather. Kudos to the display designers.
Further along, we paused once or twice, to look at flowers, fields, and one enclosure temporarily built to protect the riparian (river-bottom) fields and forests. Elk and Moose have overgrazed the area and destroyed the original river bank environment. Fences have been installed to "filter out" the larger animals, thus letting nature take its original course. Interesting.
By now, it was time for our hike. We were not trying a multi-mile route, less than one mile in fact. The path around Sprague Lake was perfect, smooth and scenic.
Shortly after we started, we rested on a lake-facing bench. That's how hard we hike. It's not that we can't be more energetic, it's just that we choose not to. Our story.
Shortly after we sat down, Marianne noticed movement on the opposite bank. A moose. We sat there for 20 minutes as the moose walked across the shallow lake to enjoy his lunch just in front of us. Absolutely mezmerising
Photography side note. For this trip, I had opted to not bring along the "big" cameras, with long lenses, because there would just not be many opportunities to make use of the specific capabilities. I did bring the Leica Q2 for its very high quality (48Mb) pictures and the ever-present iPhone 15s. This moose sighting was exactly where the long-lens camera would have been useful, but it was in Fresno. As for the Leica, I had forgotten it back at the hotel. Darn. But iPhones are pretty good.
From Sprague Lake, we drove out to the end of the road at Bear Lake. We had gained a few thousand feet elevation, and the altitude was having effects, so we just turned around and descended back to a lower elevation picnic spot. The food was simple, but the stream-side setting was perfect.
Having spent six wonderful hours inside the park, we added one more tourist stop: The Stanley Hotel. This century-old tourist landmark has been the most famous Estes Park attraction since the builder of steam-powered cars opened the resort in 1903. This time of year, it is filled with today's tourist and a bit too crowded for much more than a quick visit and some snapshots.
We eschewed the main dining ares at The Stanley and chose The Post, a simpler bar and restaurant off to the side. It turned out to be a great experience. The food was good, but the best part was discussion with our waiter, Lazo. We learned he is a brew master from Chihuahua who works in Estes in the tourist season. I think he convinced us to take a trip to his hometown. We'll see.
And that was it. We will head to Denver Airport tomorrow, with a stop with friends on the way.
Stay tuned.
John and Marianne