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Published: September 26th 2019
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Today is the day we head over to Rocky Mountain National Park. I am excited to be going back there. Not sure what it is, but something about that park just keeps calling me back. But this time I get to share it with Donald.
Before we would get to RMNP, we would have a lot of driving to do. We left Montrose and began our way to the park. Our rental car did not have a navigation system, so we used our iPhone for maps and directions. Donald likes Google Maps, so we used google to lead us through Colorado. We learned that google likes to bypass cities and will take you on all the back roads to avoid them. We traveled many back roads on this trip. The backroads eventually took us to the interstate which made for faster driving. But even the interstate did not provide many exits or things such as rest areas. The section of the interstate we traveled was more scenic than most interstates. It traveled along a river and railway and took us through canyons and tunnels. After a while google directed us to exit then to a another backroad and then onto
a dirt road. A dirt road? We were not too sure we should trust google at that point, but having no cell service or any idea of an alternate route, we went with it. We stayed on the dirt road for 25 miles. I am always up for an adventure, but I was a bit apprehensive not knowing where we were going or where we would end up.
Google brought us out of the dirt road and back to just simple paved backroads. We stayed on those a while and stopped in the small town of Grandby for a late lunch since that was our first opportunity for a meal and then headed on to the park through Grand Lake. Grand Lake is a resort town with all sorts of homes and cabins around the lake - expensive homes. A few miles after entering the park, we stopped to hike Holzwarth Historic Ranch Trail. It was a mile round trip and a good place to stretch a bit. At the end of the trail were several buildings from the old ranch. All of the buildings were closed for they were either used as park staff residences or were being
worked on for restoration. It was disappointing to not be able to actually see any of the buildings and their history.
We left the ranch and soon stopped along with many other people to watch a herd of elk. Usually where there are people, there are animals. This held true today. We then continued our way to the Alpine Visitor Center. We did not stay long for we were both feeling the effects of high elevation and needed to head down a bit. So that is what we did. We were not fortunate enough to see any additional wildlife roaming about and continued to the other side of the park and exited to find our hotel. We were ready to be done with driving for the day.
After checking in and locating our room, we went into the town of Estes Park. We did a little walking, a little window shopping and a little eating. Then back to our room. It had been a long day of riding and we both were ready to call it a day.
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