Estes Park

Colorful Colorado!

It’s such a great vista leaving the Midwest plains and seeing the mountains.  As they grew bigger it builds anticipation to explore the beauty of the mountains.  Since we were staying in Estes Park we had to drive up into the mountains following a river:

Twisting and turning up the slope is never fun when you are 44 feet long and towing another 20 foot truck. One could get a little RV seasick. Probably the worst part is having to drive slow because of the turns and having that row of cars behind you – knowing that they are cursing you every mile. Good thing that there were slow moving vehicle turn outs every once in a while where we could pull over and let them pass.

We stayed at the Elk Meadow Lodge and RV Park.  We understand that it is the only campground in the Estes Park area that can handle a rig our size.

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It had a nice dog park where Bear was so busy trying to figure out what kind of critter dug these holes:

We later found out that these were the culprit:

They look all cute and like chipmunks, but they’re not! They make a high pitched sound that drove Bear nuts! Digging holes where you could break an ankle. Real varmints! Someone called them miniature prairie dogs.

We ventured into the town of Estes Park to check out the shops, grab a drink and have dinner.

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Quaint town with a sort of hippie vibe. Everywhere we went we heard 70’s music – Eagles, Steve Miller, Dylan, etc. Felt like I was back in high school. I had to try a local beer:

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We had a very nice dinner at the Seasoned Bistro, but because we didn’t have reservations we had to eat outside. It got a bit cold towards the end of the meal so they brought us some blankets. Very nice!

The next day we wanted to head into the Rocky Mountain National Park and since we have an annual pass to all the national parks we thought – No Problem. Wrong!!! Problem!!! Apparently in Colorado you need to reserve a time to go into the National Parks due to COVID. Really? The park is 266,000 acres! We did hear that you can get into the park after 5:00pm without a reservation. We went at 4:45pm and we were able to access the park – no pass needed. Well worth it:

Stunning! We only drove about ten miles in and we kept stopping along the road to take pictures. our original intent was to get some hiking in, but with the restrictions we weren’t able to. We did get a chance to get above the tree line and look out at the vista. Caught these creatures:

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There was still some snow around and along side the drive we saw these:

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Good thing that they have and use that heavy equipment to remove the snow on the roads. That drift was about ten foot tall and it’s the middle of June!

The next day we had enough time to run back into town to purchase a Christmas gift for Keenan and have lunch at Claires. Get food!

We had to traverse the road back down to Denver the next day to get a road big enough to take us to Breckenridge. Twisted and turned the whole way down again moving very slowly and holding up traffic. At least we were faster than this: