Stop 18: Estes Park, CO (Rocky Mountain National Park)

There's just no good way to get from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park unless you want to add a hundred miles by backtracking and looping up through Wyoming and down. Any way you go,you are crossing the Rocky Mountains.

After considering several possible routes (one of which we now realize won't even be open until June), we chose the least difficult route. It still had us crossing 3 passes. The steepest, most difficult was right out of Steamboat Springs. Rabbit Ears Pass (9,426') led straight into Muddy Pass (8,722'). That was good because the climb to Muddy after coming down from Rabbit Ears was so slight that we were unaware of it. We turned North at the top of Muddy Pass and drove through miles of high plains. Then we turned East through Cameron Pass (10,276'). Because we were already so high, Cameron wasn't much of an obstacle. These first few photos are from our approach to Cameron Pass.

Kristen was dreading Cameron Pass but, it ended up being a fairly easy pass to get over. As I keep telling her, it's not the altitude but the steepness of the grades that we should be concerned about. Rabbit Ears was much worse than Cameron but, being right out of Steamboat Springs, it was a part of every route under consideration.

Once we were over Cameron, we followed the Cache La Poubre River through a canyon for many, many, many miles, eventually reaching Fort Collins,CO (where people drive very badly).

Looking upstream from our lunch spot along the Cache La Poudre River.

Our lunch spot along the Cache La Poudre River.

Once we were set up at our campground we went out for some gas and groceries. Just behind Safeway, we found the Stanley Hotel, Steven King's inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in his novel, The Shining.  The exterior that was used in the movie is in Mt. Hood, Oregon. We may have to check it out later in this trip.

Our first full day: Rocky Mountain National Park

We pretty much did the park in one day. Fortunately, there are many other things to see in the area.

Just inside the park, we spotted this herd of Rocky Mountain Elk. This group looks to be all male. The Roosevelt Elk in Northern California have all male "bachelor herds" because only the strongest male gets to stay with the females. It appears that Rocky Mountain Elk have the same pattern.

A closeup of the same herd.

A shot of the mountains from the same point where we took the elk pictures.

More mountains.

A very marshy and windy stream.

View from the viewpoint at Many Parks Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Many Parks Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve. This is well above the 10,000' level. The 12,183' pass (the highest major highway in North America) is closed at this point. Back in paragraph 2, I mentioned that one of the routes from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park won't be opened until June. This is that route

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve.

View from the viewpoint at Rainbow Curve.

A view of the mountains from the Bear Lake Road.

Another herd of elk. More are scattered all through the trees. This group appears to be all female (though I'd bet that there's a male in there somewhere).

More mountains from Bear Lake Road.

Sprague Lake.

On our way back to the trailer, we stopped and looked around downtown Estes Park. Very nice little town. We thought that we might want to go out for pizza for dinner so we asked one of the shopkeepers about the pizza parlors in the area. He said that we had to try Poppy's on the Riverwalk. We asked if the pizza was good and he said that it was OK but that Poppy's had (listen up Grant) Pliny the Elder on tap. I was sold. The pizza was actually pretty good and our table was right on the river.

Our second full day:

Our campground hosts told us about a beautiful little town, just North of Estes Park, called Glen Haven. Something that we've learned about campground hosts is that they very often host campgrounds in other parts of the country for half of the year. This host has just returned from hosting a park that we've stayed in before in Borrego Springs, CA. She must have missed it when Glen Haven was pretty much wiped off the map by a flood last September.

Not knowing that, we decided to visit Glen Haven on our second day. It's only about 6 1/2 miles North but it's down a road called Devils Road Gulch which has a 15 MPH speed limit down an 10 degree grade with many, many hairpin turns. Reaching the bottom, we found that much of the road was dirt (temporary repairs). Getting to where our GPS indicated the center of town was, we found a couple of buildings standing. Most of the homes on the hills looked like they had suffered some damage.

We turned around and headed back up the hill. After having lunch in our trailer, we decided to walk across the road and take the 4 mile hike around Lake Estes.

Near the start of our hike, looking West towards town.

The Stanley Hotel from the lakeside.

The Stanley Hotel form the lakeside.

After rounding the West end of the lake, we took this shot looking East at the dam. Our RV park is just below the dam.

We've been seeing these birds that look like very large black and white blue jays. We finally identified them as magpies. This is the only picture that I've managed to take of one.

From a high point, that's our RV park on the other side of the dam.

The Stanley Hotel from across the lake.

The spillways from below the dam.

Tomorrow, we head for Rawlins, WY.

Addendum: This happened last night and none of the pictures turned out. Our site seems to be along a route that the elk take every evening. We were sitting out on our deck and took the following photos:

-JC-