We had a good day driving through Rocky Mountain National Park. I had allowed two days for the park but it only took one. The park is easily covered in a single day if hikes are not included.
Going up Big Thompson Canyon from Loveland to Estes Park, while we were stopped for road construction we spotted our first big horn sheep. All the parks we've been in without ever seeing them, and here they were on a hillside about 200 feet from the road. What a lucky break! (Still no moose.)
Estes Park is the gateway to the park. It's in a beautiful setting with mountains towering all around. It has a population of nearly 6,000 but the town looks bigger. They have many times that number in tourists and summer residents during the season which isn't over yet but is winding down.
The pictures of the mountains would have been much better with blue sky but all we had today was solid white overcast which makes a terrible background. A little blue started showing up as we were leaving but it was too little and too late.
Instead of blue sky we had stunning fall color which was one of the things we wanted to see here. The aspens are putting on a magnificent show all over the park. This picture was taken at Bear Lake which was at the end of one of the two roads we drove.
Numerous signs said the parking lot at Bear Lake was full and to take the shuttle bus from down near the bottom. We usually can find a handicapped space open so we went on up. The lot was packed but we did luck into the only open handicapped space.
The Bear Lake trail was very short (half mile) and level, just what we wanted. The scenery was absolutely stunning. Being able to get out and walk around the lake made our day. There weren't any other hikes suitable for us so we were very glad to find this one.
Aspens and extra-colorful boulders.
After Bear Lake we went back down to Trail Ridge Road which is the one that goes up to 12,183 feet. It's the highest paved road in the park system.
Trail Ridge Road near the summit. This is from the park service's website as it's a better picture than the one I took.
The road is snaking up the side of the mountain down where the aspens are golden.
The land above the tree line is tundra (around 11,400 feet here). Plants grow extremely slowly in this very harsh environment. Winds get up to 150 mph and blow off any snow cover that might protect them. Temperatures stay under freezing for eight months a year. If people step off a path their footprints cause damage which can take two hundred years to repair itself.
The basin shape in this mountain was dug out by a glacier during the last Ice Age. It looks like a giant took a bite out of it.
Behind the Alpine Visitor Center (the highest one in the park system) you can just see the Old Fall River Road snaking up the mountain. It was the only road across the park from 1920 to 1932 when Trail Ridge Road opened. The old road is still open to traffic but it's one way going up. It's dirt, very narrow and steep with a lot of switchbacks. We weren't tempted to do it.
The light was a little better late in the day so these mountains don't look quite so washed out. The sky is still missing though.
Part of the Big Thompson Canyon where the road is built up and held in place by a retaining wall. The canyon was cut over the eons by the Big Thompson River. The road is built right next to the river all the way down the canyon. It's not hard to imagine what happened here in 2013's flash flood, evidence of which is still easy to find. This is no place to be caught in something like that but there are still a lot of houses right in harm's way.
At the bottom of the canyon the mountains and rocks change so much it looks like Arizona or New Mexico. The climate changes too. Loveland got into the upper 80's today while Estes park was mid 70's and the top of the mountains was low 50's. That was actually pretty warm for 12,000' elevation so we felt fortunate not to be freezing.
Since we got done with the park in one day we've got tomorrow open. We'll decide in the morning what we're going to do.
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