My piece on Rocky Mountain National Park, park No. 58 out of No. 59, will be shorter than my usual dispatches as we are packing for our rafting trip with Claire and Kyle down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. By the time you read this is post, we will have already been on the river for a couple of days experiencing what I know will be great adventure. We have been here in Estes Park, Colorado, for the past eight days staying at a campground near the entrance to the park.
The weather has cooperated and I took full advantage of this going into the park almost every day to hike and shoot photos. Like in Glacier NP, there is a 45-mile scenic road that winds through the park with many places to pull over and take in almost surreal vistas. Also as with Glacier, the hikes were really spectacular, and many of the ones that I did climbed up to beautiful alpine lakes. On quiet mornings, the lakes were like glass and reflected perfectly the mountains of the Continental Divide that soared behind them. Laura was still taking it easy as she recovers from her bout with giardia, and did not get into the park as much as she would have liked. Her top priority was ensuring that she is 100% for our nine-day raft trip and then the trip to visit our last national park, National Park of American Samoa.
So this odyssey is slowly winding down, but we have indeed saved some really wonderful parks and experiences for our final turn.
A collection of photos from our visit to Rocky Mountain NP are below.
Click on photos to open gallery in Flickr –
SOARING MOUNTAINS, SURREAL VISTAS
THE LOCHS
A PANORAMIC PERSPECTIVE
ASPENS
