Rocky Road to Rocky Mountain

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Today was both a very unlucky and adventurous day. We started off the day by Simone falling in a cactus. Joe pulled out all the spikes that were visible, but I ended up having to take tweezers and take out the ones that were not as visible. As you can imagine, it probably feels like a hundred splinters in your hand. Then, Elise was bitten by red ants. Finally, we stopped in Manila to take a shower and shop, and Joe realized once we were over the mountain pass that he had forgotten all of our shower stuff, his clothes, his new sun hat and our sarongs outside the store. So, we left the trailer in a pullout and drove back over the mountain to get our stuff. All in all, we did not really leave Flaming Gorge until close to 3pm. I was still sad to leave…to me Flaming Gorge is truly a gem.

Leaving at 3pm would have been fine, except I had sorely miscalculated how far we needed to drive to Rocky Mountain State Park. On the map, it looks like about a 5 or 6 hour drive. That calculation did not include the mountain passes and driving 30 miles per hour. All in all, I think we drove for 9 hours.

We drove through Steamboat Springs, and the kids could smell sulfur, and they all yelled “Ewwwwww”. I guess they are not over the smell yet.

We came into Rocky Mountain Park at about 9pm. Joe and I looked at each other and decided that we would try to get to our campsite at Glaciar Basin tonight. Besides, how long could 40 miles take? Unfortunately, we found out that highway 34, also called the Trail Ridge Road, through Rocky Mountain National Park is a windy, switchback road that goes all the way up to 12,000 feet. In addition, there was work being done on the road. So, at the highest point, we had to wait about 15 minutes for a car to escort us. There was a bearded man with rough teeth who was bundled up with hats and goloves who told us that we were lucky because we were the last car to be let drive across the mountain. That was right before he returned to his new red corvette that he was sitting in. What would have happened if we got there after 10pm? Would they have sent us back down? The work being done on Trail Ridge Road has left the road somewhat tenuous. It doesn’t help that there are no guardrails and that we couldn’t see what was below us. Joe had a fear that we would get too close, and that the camper would lose a wheel over the edge and it would eventually pull us down. He white-knuckled it all the way through. We both had our eyes closely peeled to the road because it was pitch black. We only saw one deer and 2 bunnies, but it could have been worse. All in all, a dangerous but adventurous part of our trip.

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