Well, we’ve been here in Loveland for 2 days now, and have been really enjoying looking to our west and seeing the great Rocky Mountains. So today (Monday), we decided to stop looking at them and go take a drive through them. We drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. When we lived in Colorado, you used to be able to drive through Rocky Mountain National Park any time you wanted to. Now you have to have a reservation if you go between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. I guess it’s so popular now that they have to control the crowds. Since we are early risers, we just decided to go early and not worry about a reservation. As we drove through the park, we stopped at many of the overlooks and just absorbed the most spectacular scenery. This part of today’s blog is better done in pictures than words, so I hope you enjoy these pictures of the beautiful scenery that we enjoyed today.

 






Estes Park
   
Estes Park





















After we left the National Park, we were still in the mountains and enjoying the scenery. Some of the time we were down in a valley with the mountains rising above us on either side. Occasionally there were creeks or streams running along the highway with the mountains as a backdrop. Absolutely gorgeous! We stopped at a park with picnic tables to eat some sandwiches that we had brought with us for lunch. There was a view of the mountains off in the distance, and it was so peaceful and serene just sitting there eating a lunch in the midst of what seemed like paradise.

 


After lunch, we drove to Breckenridge. We walked around some of the shops on Main Street. We then decided that we would take a ski lift up the mountain. They run the ski lifts in summer so people can just go up and enjoy the view, both at the top and also on the way up and down. To get to the ski lift, we had to take a Gondola. We rode the Gondola from the base in Breckenridge to the mountain where the ski lifts run. The Gondola ride was beautiful and we looked forward to an even more beautiful ride up the ski lifts. After we got off the Gondola, we went to purchase our ski lift tickets. We were just about to make the purchase – I was reaching for my wallet, in fact – when the ticket seller received a message on his walkie talkie. He looked at me and said “Oops, you hear that?” I didn’t hear anything but static, but he whose ears know how to interpret walkie talkie static told us that lightning had been spotted in the area and they were closing down the mountain. Lightning can be very dangerous, of course, and they take it very seriously in the high altitudes of Colorado. One lightning strike, and they shut everything down for at least a half hour. We headed back to the Gondola, hoping to get on it before they shut it down too, but we didn’t make it. Before we got back on, they stopped running it. Then they herded everyone over to some buses. They overloaded the buses, we were packed so tight, standing room only (Don’t these people know there is a pandemic going on? Wait, is that still happening?) Anyway, the bus ride, even though uncomfortable, was short, maybe 10 minutes, and they deposited us right back down in the parking lot. Well, at least we got half of what we wanted to accomplish. The ski lift would have been nice. But you can’t regret things you can’t control.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Well, I guess I have 2 days’ worth of blogging to catch up on. I’ll see how much I can get through tonight. First, an update on our night in Pittsburg, Kansas. We stayed the whole night at the City Park campground – no knock on the door during the night telling us to leave. When we looked out the window the next morning, there were only 3 spaces taken of the 12 spaces in the park. We’re still scratching out heads at the “No Vacancy” sign. We got to the tire shop around 8 a.m., purchased a new tire, got it installed on the truck, got the spare tire put back in its rightful place under the truck, and were done shortly after 9. We are grateful for our safety on the side of the highway, for the two men who stopped to help us, and that we were able to find the right tire and get on our way so quickly. Now on to the rest of our vacation! Not the kind of picture you want to take on vacation   We continued heading west in Kansas, but didn't drive too far before our first stop. Unlike yes...
Read more
Image
We spent Monday morning in Hannibal, Missouri. They might as well rename the town Mark Twain City. It’s all about him, their most famous citizen. We visited the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. The museum consisted of 7 historic properties, including the interpretive center, which contained a lot of information about Mark Twain’s life and is located in the home where Mark Twain, birth name of Sam Clemens, grew up and where the real adventures of Tom Sawyer took place. The other buildings/points of interest included restored homes of Huckleberry Finn and Becky Thatcher, the Justice of the Peace office where Sam’s father worked, Grant’s Drugstore, and the Tom and Huck statue. That’s only six (if you’re counting) because they actually count the gift shop as building number 7. We also saw the famous whitewashed fence. When Sam and his family fell on hard times, the family moved in with some friends: Dr. Grant and his family, where they lived above his drugstore. Dr. Grant was a first co...
Read more
Image
On Thursday, we just hung out at the campground, getting rested up before starting the 2000-mile journey back home, with a few stops along the way. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see a third sighting of Babe the Blue Ox! The campground where we are staying is called Sugar Bay Campground Resort and is located in Cohasset, Minnesota (near Grand Rapids) on, well you can probably guess, Sugar Bay. The bay is actually connected with other bays/waterways and together they all form a lake, of course - Lake Pokegama. As I mentioned earlier, it is a senior RV park. There are only 10 sites; only 4 of the sites are right on the lake, and ours is one of them. We took our lawn chairs out and sat next to the lake the first night we were here. While we are in the camper, we enjoy looking out the windows at the scenic lake. One morning, I happened to wake up early (5ish), and watched the sunrise over the lake. Absolutely gorgeous! Today we just hung out, kind of like we did in Loveland. We sat out by t...
Read more