|
|
|
| Road Trip 2004 - links to images and words on the road to see Rush:
Monday June 28, 2004 Rocky Mountains - Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park. Wheezing along at 12,500' elevation!
Now we have some decent weather, and Rocky Mountain National Park wildlife to boot! The deer and Elk appeared within 4 minutes of entering the park. Almost like they are posing for us - Hmmm......
Horseback riding on Sunday June 27, 2004
Monday June 28th finds us on the Trail Ridge Road, behind 2000 bicyclists who are riding the Rockies.
Watch out! Aggressive Magpies waiting for handouts at the vista point.
Dinner at the Bald Pate Inn outside Estes Park. The hotel has a key collection of over 30,000 keys donated by guests and well-wishers over the years. Note the key on the quilted bedspreads.
The Stanley Hotel, where parts of the movie The Shining were filmed.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Sunday June 27, 2004 Estes Park, CO. Hey, the rain has stopped! Awesome, we'll travel up the mountain and into Rocky Mountain National Park. We found an outfitter that does trail rides, and had set up to do a 2-hour horseback ride in the park. Within minutes of entering the park, we spot an elk (almost posing for us at the entrance!). Snap some pictures and then concentrate on finding the stable. Temperatures are still cool; we are after all, in the Rocky Mountains. We wait for the wranglers to saddle and round up horses and riders. My horse has no withers (yep, they put me on a draft horse.) and I am warned to watch the saddle as it may come loose or rotate to the left or right. The saddle kept riding to the left, so I was constantly standing on the right stirrup to adjust it. I did not want the saddle rolling around the horse's midsection! The video I captured from horseback is really jumpy. It's comical – makes the Blair Witch Project look like it was shot with a SteadyCam. The ride was great – a nice slow pace with no real cantering or galloping. There were a few steep slopes to negotiate though. At one of the steeper downhill runs, a woman two horses behind me fell off the horse. My guess is she wasn't paying attention to what was going on and failed to lean back and step into the stirrups. We heard a loud yell, and then a "Whooop!" and she hit the rocks with a thud. She mostly had the pride knocked out of her, but will carry a bruised hip and left arm as a reminder to pay attention to the terrain. The back wrangler switched horses with her and once all were mounted again we continued on. The ride paced along slowly, and we watched the clouds roll in across the mountains from the west. Luckily we pulled back to the corral and dismounted about 10 minutes ahead of the rain. Monday June 28, 2004 Estes Park, CO. Today we were going to travel across the mountains and end up in Glenwood Springs. But. Turns out there is a bicycle event happening today – some 2000 riders are starting in Estes Park and riding 65 miles (65 MILES!) up the mountains and down the back side, which will cause significant traffic delays. We talk with the Appenzell Inn folks, and add one more night to our stay, canceling the Glenwood reservations. Gotta be flexible while traveling, eh? The day starts reasonably in Estes Park, and the weather holds as we travel up the mountain. The sky is sunny and impossibly blue as we rise above some cloud cover at 9000 feet. There is one delay, about 20 minutes on the road up. We had stopped for pictures and no sooner than we got on the road we stopped again. A park ranger was walking down the line of cars explaining that there was a cycling stop ahead of us and the last of the riders were moving up in elevation. We had seen the occasional single rider grimly pedaling up the 8% slopes. I know my lungs would explode if I tried that kind of ride – it would take me a year to get into mountain cycling shape to tackle RMNP. So we waited. As we wandered along the roadside, the sound of bluegrass music wafted back to us. We walked up about ten cars and a there along the roadside was an impromptu performance of the "something Holler Boys". An upright base, mandolin and banjo players cracked into a Grateful Dead tune with a bluegrass bent. Not too shabby, I may post the video I've got (assuming there is room and bandwidth available on the Comcast.net site). They ended the song and explained "we were taking the scenic route to the gig tonight". Passed around a hat and managed to make a few bucks waiting for traffic to clear. Once we got going again, the rains returned the higher we traveled. By 1pm CST, we had reached the Alpine Visitors Center at 12,000 feet in a cold drizzle. Cyclists were stopping in and warming briefly, then pressing on to the western park entrance. A tough day and tough environment for bicycling, 40°F and raining at 12k feet with just enough O2 to keep the automobile drivers conscious. More drizzle on the way down the mountain, but it did warm up a little as we descended. At one of the vista points, a magpie bird came down and perched on my passenger mirror. This one was posing for food – we obliged and got a few good pictures out of it. More elk posed as we left the park, resulting in more great pictures. We took the advice of the Appenzell Inn folks and went to an out-of-the-way lodge for dinner. The Bald Pate Inn is tucked into the forest about 7 miles from Estes Park. Good chili, great muffins and homemade bread. The Inn hosts a key museum, with a collection of over 30,000 keys given to the owners over the years. Only in the Rockies I suppose.
|
