Rocky Mountain National Park with Family

Anne and Rich

I am continuing to blog about trips my husband and I took last summer, pre-pandemic days. This summer we are staying home trying to stay as healthy as possible.  I never had a chance to show many "Summer of 2019" trips on my blog, as I was blogging about our wonderful land and sea trip to Alaska--click this tab to read all those posts--that we took last June, which took up many posts. When my husband's sister and brother-in-law, Anne and Rich,  visited us last August, we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park ( RMNP) for a quick visit.  My husband and I have visited RNNP many times since moving to Colorado--it is only about a two-hour drive from our home.  If you'd like to see past more in-depth posts about the park you can see them on this tab link.  This time we wanted to share the beauty with Anne and Rich. Our brother-in-law was not a fan of high elevations, as he had some dizziness and shortness of breath when we visited the ski resort town of Breckenridge a few days before--click here to read that post--so we knew this would be a quick but a non-the-less scenic trip to enjoy together,

If I ever win the lottery I'm going to buy a second house in Estes Park, the town very close to the entrance to RMNP,  so I can stay there often and visit RMNP all the time.  I absolutely love it!  This summer RMNP, which is a very popular national park that attracts many millions of visitors every year, instituted a reservation system to control how many people could enter the park in an effort to help visitors maintain social distance and avoid overcrowding in parking areas.  I heard it is working so well it may become a permanent feature. Local residents are able to enter the park without a reservation before 6am and after 5pm--see more information on the park's official website at this link. 

Because we were going to basically drive in and out of the park, so my brother-in-law could stay in the car and not exert himself, most of my photos were "drive-by" photos.  

Trail Ridge Road is the major road inside the park and covers the 48 miles, both ways, between Estes Park on the park's east side and Grand Lake on the west. It crests at over 12,000 feet and includes many overlooks to experience the subalpine and alpine worlds of the park.

Even though it was the month of August there was still snow and glaciers on the high Rocky Mountains!

Lots of purple mountain majesty to see in every direction!

So many majestic views the higher we drove.

We made a quick stop at Forest Canyon Overlook so Anne could take a quick walk with me to get some views of the deep green forest views below.

We arrived at the Alpine Visitor Center parking lot but did not go into the building--this is the highest part of Trail Ridge Road so we knew we would turn around here and go back to a lower elevation for Rich's comfort. If you look at the collage above one of the photos is of a tundra walk up the side of a mountain across from the Alpine Center. The tundra in this part of the park is similar to the tundra at the arctic circle!

The views here are spectacular!

Long's Peak is in the distance.  At an elevation of 14,259-feet (4346 m), it is the highest mountain in the park.

Please click on photo collage to enlarge to learn more about the Alpine tundra.

Alpine Tundra view

Please click on photo to enlarge

Alpine Tundra wildflowers

Do you see the elk in the distance?

A closer view

They live and roam wild in a beautiful place!

On our drive back down to a lower elevation in the park we saw many bristlecone pines and weather bent trees.  Trail Ridge Road is closed starting in October to late May due to deep snow.

We did a quick drive-by to show Anne and Rich the famous Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.  This is where the author Stephen King was inspired to write his horror novel "The Shining" because of a paranormal experience he had there as a guest.  I also "saw" a ghost when we stayed at the Stanley Hotel.  My ghost seemed to be a benevolent one! Click here to read that post. Summer thunderstorm clouds gathered on the way home.

As we approached our community we were greeted by a beautiful rainbow in the sky!  It was the end of a wonderful and memorable day together. We hope that we will have many more visits to Rocky Mountain National Park in the future....in the meantime we wish you all dear readers to please stay happy, stay grateful, and stay healthy!

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