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.

August 19-Day 2 of Vacation

Today we didn’t really do too much in the morning. After we got up and around, Justin and grabbed my laptop and headed into town for breakfast. We ate at this place called the Egg & I. Very yummy.

Then we walked around town some more. This place is extremely pet friendly. Dogs can go in to most of the stores downtown. They have buckets of water outside their shop for dogs. Samson would have loved it here, however, the 9 hr drive would have been miserable for all of us. We checked out some more stores. We don’t want to buy our souvenirs till a little later into the vacation, but we are keeping track of where all the good stuff is. We mostly spend our money in the ma and pop snack shops with homemade ice cream and chocolate candies.

We came back to our cabin and changed for our horseback ride. We spent some time playing in the river. We took some pictures of our cabin. Then we headed for the stables. After spending a few minutes lost, we finally found it. It is west of town and right up against a mountain. We checked and and I got Cinder, a black horse, and Justin got Silverado, a brown horse. They kept telling Justin to keep Silverado at least a horse length away from Cinder. We found out later that Cinder has been having some attitude problems. He seems to like to kick at the horse behind him. Our wrangler said he is just grumpy because its the end of the season.

This was no Kansas ride where you cruise down a flat dirt street, then they parade you around a small pasture so that you just get to ride a horse. Our first steps were straight up the mountain. There were rocks and tree roots the horses had to maneuver around. It didn’t take long before we were seeing the most beautiful views from this mountain. There were also little creatures following us around. This is a picture of a tiny ground squirrel of some sort. Our wrangler told us they carry the plague. Not so cute anymore, huh? It was only Justin and I on our ride. Our wrangler said it has really slowed down in the last week for them. We got to a point up in the mountain where you could look out and see the continental divide. We tried to get our horses together for the picture, but mine was very stand-offish.

So, going up was pretty exciting, but you have to remember, the steep climbs we encountered on the way up were cool, however, we have to go back down those steep climbs. She told us as we were going down things called “the devils staircase” and “slippery rock”, to lean back, grab the saddle horn, squeeze your thighs and don’t stand up in the stir-ups, or you could go straight over your horse’s head. This was definitely the worse part. My horse didn’t take anything easy. It was like riding in a jeep straight down the mountain. Cinder, would not do anything I told him to. He took me under a tree one time. I had to do the limbo on the saddle to get under it. Then on the path where she said we had to take it one at a time, I pulled back as hard as I could to stop him, but he was going with Hondo (the wrangler’s very large horse). Speaking of Hondo, he had gas and with every step he farted right into my horses face. I personally thought it was the funniest thing ever. He farted the whole way and I laughed every time. We also ran into another creature along the path, a coyote. Our wrangler said she thinks he’s looking for the two baby deer they have up there. He’s kind of hard to see in this picture, but he looked really close when we saw him. We did the two hour ride so we spent 1 nice hour riding up the mountain and 1 horrible hour going down it. I took lots of pictures of the views, but they don’t do it justice at all.

After our horseback ride, we went back to our cabin to change and get the horse stench off of us. We got all cleaned up and went to a steak joint. We both had prime rib and it was super yummy. We haven’t eaten at a bad restaurant yet. After dinner, we decided we were both pooped. We headed back to the cabin to relax. Then we decided to check out some of the trails around our cabin. So, we changed back into hiking gear, grabbed our walking sticks and headed out.

We only found about 1 or 2 marked trails. So, we started hiking. These trails were along the river and straight up a mountain. The trail was about a foot wide and if you slipped, your happy ass was rolling about 100 ft down a mountain into the river and hitting every tree and rock down. Luckily, we had our walking sticks. We found some cool rocks and began climbing to them. We tried to get some pictures, but it was getting dark and my camera was not working out for us. So, before it got too dark we headed back down to the cabin. We stopped at the wood swing they have around the outdoor fire pit. It was so nice and peaceful out. After our hike, we went back to our cabin and chilled for the rest of the night. It was kind of hard to sit around, mainly because my ass was getting sore from my horseback ride.

Today we are traveling on the scenic Trail Ridge Road. I got up early today and made coffee…mainly cuz I can. I’ll let Justin sleep in a little bit. Eventually, we will head into town so I can upload this thing. Remember, I don’t have internet or cell phone access at the cabin. So, if you call or e-mail me, it may be a while before I respond.

I got Justin up around 8am. Then he decided we needed to go for a run. So, we suited up and headed out on this narrow, curvy road we stay on. We started at 7390 ft elevation. We ran downhill for .75 miles, then back uphill another .75 miles back. We did it in approximately 18min. That may seem like a long time for 1.5 miles, but it is hilly and the air is thin up here. Now Justin is going to make me breakfast.