More Rocky Mountain NP

Tuesday was mostly sunny. so we took the 40+ mile drive along Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake on the southwest side of the park. The road climbs to 12,181 feet at it’s high point. Our scenery changed from green grass and forest to barren rock as we got into the tundra, above tree line.

 

Just after Rock Cut, where the road was cut through the rock, there is a nice trail called Tundra Communities Trail. It’s only a half mile but it’s uphill and at that elevation in the cold wind, it was more than enough. There were some interesting rock formations and great views.

   

And lots of marmots scurrying around on the rocks.

Next stop was back down to 8,000 feet where it was much warmer and we could eat lunch outside. We hiked the Coyote Valley trail along the Colorado River hoping to see moose, but no luck. We were only ten miles south of the headwaters.

We continued on to Grand Lake, which is actually just outside of the park. It was a nice little community of vacation homes on the lake and the downtown was quaint with wooden sidewalks and touristy shops, but tastefully done. We stopped in the Grand Lake Lodge, since it looked like an interesting building and Jim wanted to look at the old cars out front.

 

There was construction along Trail Ridge Road, and the signs warned of up to 30 minute delays, but we were fortunate on the drive west only to have to wait a couple minutes. Not so lucky heading back. At one point we sat for over 45 minutes in a line probably a couple miles long. At least this herd of elk kept us entertained while we waited. Most of them crossed the road except for a couple youngsters who were hesitant. They were very vocal about being left behind, and finally crossed between stopped cars. We were glad we made the drive but it was way too many hours spent sitting in the car, and Jim is not the most patient person, as some of you may know.

 

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, Aspenglen Campground

  

Our backyard for the week in the Aspenglen Campground, right in Rocky Mountain National Park, about 5 miles from Estes Park, CO. We got lucky and got a fairly good site, other than it being a roadside pull-off. It’s $20 a night, no hookups, no dump, but there is water and flush toilets for a change. We actually even have a weak internet connection, which is better than none.

Been here a day and so far it’s been the typical high mountain weather. Clouds and a little rain off and on, then sunshine for awhile, then more clouds and rain. Hope we have a clear day to take the scenic drive to the west side of the park. Today we drove around to a couple different areas and hiked several shorter trails. Tried to find the big horn sheep, but at the ranger talk last night he said they have moved up to the higher elevations during the warmer weather. We aren’t finding upper 60’s very warm!

This is Fall River, behind our site. We walked a trail by the river last night and saw a family of wild turkeys. There were at least 6 little ones and 2 adults.

 

It was cloudy most of the day today, so our pictures aren’t good, but we walked the Alluvial Fan trail, where a flood from a broken dam in 1982 actually killed 2 people staying in Aspenglen campground, and flooded Estes Park with 6 feet of water. The area is still a jumble of dead trees and rocks that were thrown about in the flood.

We also hiked around Sprague Lake and Bear Lake, then up to Alberta Falls, a beautiful waterfall and lots of rocks.

We probably hiked about 4 miles total today, but the 9000+ elevation at the trails made it feel like more. There are 355 miles of trails in the park, and Ranger Don, from the program last night, has hiked all 355 miles. Quite impressive! We’ll be lucky if we can do 20 the entire week.

One more picture. Jim wants this to be our next tow vehicle.

Love Those Rocks

We are having a great week here at Vedauwoo Campground. We’ve hiked some nice trails and climbed lots of rocks trying to see how high we can get. So far we haven’t had much luck, but it’s fun trying.

Here are a few of the views we got from the higher rocks. This is a beautiful part of Wyoming.

  

The Turtle Rock trail goes a few miles around the mountain. Some of it passes through the deep dark woods full of aspens, and the rest is more open around the rocks.

We did change campsites yesterday, as the first loop we were in was invaded by a group of about 10 people and a bunch of tents. They were fairly quiet for as many of them as there were, but they were right across from us and we just didn’t like looking at them. This is only a representation of the group. Use your imagination for the rest.

Our new site is more private and surrounded by rocks but we can’t see the climbers anymore. I was spending too much time looking through the binoculars anyway. Just as we finished up our hike today, we came out at a vacant tent site and sat at the picnic table for awhile, watching these guys on the rocks. They got where we were attempting to go, but after seeing how they did it, we knew why we only made it halfway. I’m sure they are at least 30 years younger and a lot less afraid of falling.

Two of them took this giant leap across the last rock, but the other two were smart enough not to try. It took them quite awhile to get down, since they realized it wasn’t possible to leap back up across the rock. We really thought one of them would fall, but we kept watching and they finally got off it somehow by going down the backside..This had to be a really long jump!

Here are a few more pictures of some the the interesting boulders we’ve seen here. Wonder when we’ll get tired of looking at rocks.

   

We also drove to Laramie a couple times for lunch and shopping. Gotta love a small university town with a great vegetarian restaurant, Sweet Melissa Cafe, and a Super Wal-Mart. We’ve also met several nice people camping here, including Randy, the camp host, and have enjoyed spending time talking with them. If we hadn’t made reservations at Rocky Mountain National Park for Sunday, we would probably spend another week here.

Vedauwoo Campground, Laramie, WY

We are in a lovely Medicine Bow National Forest campground called Vedauwoo, about 15 miles east of Laramie. At an elevation of almost 8300 feet, we are finally escaping the low 90’s we’ve had in South Dakota and Nebraska. We’re glad we visited South Dakota, but it isn’t somewhere we care to go back to.

We absolutely love it here, though. We can just see the Rockies from our site, and we are surrounded by huge jumbled rock formations. And it is only $10 a night, with water and vault toilets. No hookups, of course. The only negative is it’s just a mile off of I-80, and you can hear a little traffic noise.

Needless to say, this is a big rock climbing area. The camp host told us it would be packed this weekend, but most everyone was already gone by the time we arrived yesterday. We did see some climbers when we took a walk through the park and along the Box Canyon trail. We even climbed some rocks ourselves.

    

The changing color of the rocks across from our site was really pretty as the sun was going down.

 

We are planning to stay here until Sunday, when we have reservations in Rocky Mountain National Park. There area enough trails and rocks to play on to keep us busy here all week.

Chadron State Park, Chadron, NE

 

We left Custer yesterday and headed south into Nebraska. Not a state we had any great desire to visit, but Chadron is a really nice state park. The only complaint we have is their fee system. It is $17 a night for a campsite with electric but no water at the site, which is reasonable. The problem is there is a daily entrance fee of $4 per vehicle, for both the car and motorhome, even though we weren’t driving the motorhome out of the park. So the total comes to $25. We paid for one night and then decided to stay another night after riding our bikes around the park last night. Plus I found out there is a washer and dryer in the restroom building, and it was only $1 each. I ended up doing 4 loads this afternoon, saving us a trip into town to the laundromat.

There are several hiking trails so today we took the 2 mile trail to the Black Hills overlook. There are lots of hills in this part of Nebraska, as we discovered on the bike ride and hike. It was really pretty and green, with rocks to make it interesting.

    

Jim wanted me to mention that if anyone out there has a dental problem while visiting the Custer, SD area, Dr Daniel Custis was great. He made an onlay as Jim watched, and so far he is very pleased with the result. The way things are going, pretty soon we’ll have a dentist in every town we visit!

Tomorrow we’re off to Cheyenne, WY for an overnight stop on our way to Laramie, where we hope to stay put for a week.