August 20-Day 3 of Vacation

Today, after Justin and I ran our 1.5 miles.  We got perty’d up and headed out to explore Rocky Mountain National Park.  We took the Old Fall River Road which was the first motor route to cross the Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was built between 1913 and 1920.  It is a one lane dirt road that runs for 9 miles following the steep slope of Mt Chapin.

The first stop on our drive was Alluvial Fan.  This was created during the Lawn Lake flood in 1982. We climbed all the rocks to the top of the falls.  We saw a small chipmunk on the way down. 

The next stop on our drive was Chasm Falls.  This is a 25ft water fall.  After that, we climbed our way up the narrow road thru some hairpin turns.  We eventually reached 10,000 ft.  The scenery up there was beautiful.  Mostly just trees and mountains as far as you can see.  It was kind of hazy today, but we still got some good views. I took my GPS watch, so I was able to keep track of our elevation the whole trip.

We did some pretty good hikes.  Some climbed 200ft.  The air is very thin at 11,000 ft.  Some of the hikes really sucked on the way up.  Down wasn’t too bad.  We saw a yellow-bellied marmot on one hike. Even though the signs say “do not approach the animals.  You may be gored”, Justin got as close as possible to the creature.

At the end of Fall River road was the Alpine visitors center.  It is at 11,796 ft.  Lucky for us it had a cafe since I didn’t prepare for the day well enough to pack food and beverages.  We both had a Nathan’s chili dog.  It was pretty yummy.  We bought some souvenirs while we were up there.  Then we hiked to the top of the mountain that was there.  We reached 12,000 ft at the top.

Then we cruised back on the Trail Ridge Road. On the way, we saw a bunch of herds of elk.  It was just like the Discovery channel.  There was a herd of does and one buck.  We rounded one corner and saw this very large herd.  They didn’t seem to afraid of us either.  The females got very close to the crowd that had gathered along side of the road.

By then, we were pooped.  We headed home and got ready for dinner. We decided to eat at a place called Grumpy Gringo’s.  We realized why the Gringo was grumpy.  The food was not very good.  I guess that serves me right for saying we hadn’t had a bad meal yet.  After dinner, we came home and hit the hot tub.  Now we are just laying around being lazy.

Tomorrow, we are headed to Fort Collins for our white water rafting experience.  That is all we have planned for tomorrow.  I’d like to try to get to the Stanley Hotel museum and the airway tram that afternoon or evening.