Day 38

 July 24 - Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

Ev and Til spent the morning riding their bikes with new friends they made from Ft. Collins, CO. They were really sweet kids, and their mother came by to hang out with Cassandra and I as we packed up camp - they were on a circum-Colorado camping trip. Every day, I am again reminded about the gracious power of human relationships. Children synching campground lifestyles; adults sharing goodwill and common-interest. We received positive energy, inspiration, and affirmation on our way to our last big stop. 

It was a pretty easy breakdown (we've gotten good at this by now…), although evening was a bit damp. The last two nights, Cassandra and I tried to sleep with the rainfly off, but both nights were interrupted by flash downpours and we had to scramble to throw the fly on - so we didn't have terribly-sound sleep.  We cannot wait to find ourselves in 40-degree evenings in the Rockies!

We hit the road around 10:30am and planned to stop in Steamboat Springs on recommendation from our friend, but we didn't realize how difficult it would be to find parking for our car-and-camper, so we kept moving through the downtown and grabbed bagels at Colorado Bagel Company on the outskirts of town. We grabbed sandwiches and a bunch for the next couple mornings.

Cassandra drove the first leg through the rest of the desert, and we switched as we approached the Rockies. The drive through the western-entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park along Trail Ridge Road was awesome - tight turns, steep inclines, and incredible overlooks in the treeless alpine region. This place and these peaks are just massive, overwhelmingly large and grand and inaccessible. It is a formidable-looking place at 13,000 feet altitude. The weather was rainy for most of the drive, and the fog through the mountains was ever-changing and deep - we wondered what all this rain would do to the desert lands in Dinosaur (like it did in Lassen).

We entered the Rockies through a large wildfire scar from 2020, and wildfires burned in the park during our stay. Burnt groves of yellow aspens and black ponderosas stood thin and lay across the horizon. The color of burnt aspens looks particularly sad and painful - it was a bummer of a way to enter the park, but we eventually found ourselves in more densely forested parts of the park. Our campsite was big and beautiful here - we have a series of huge rocks running behind our campsite, and the kids immediately were busy climbing all over them after we stopped the car. We have a beautiful view of a large peak overlooking Moraine Park, which is a large meadow bisected be the winding Thompson River. We saw mule deer and elk on the drive in (which caused a bunch of slowdowns and traffic).

We are all so excited to be here. As we setup camp, Ev and Til befriended kids from the adjacent campsite, and they played for the rest of the night - running and climbing all over the rocks and playing all kids of games (as well as playing with the local chipmunks…). It feels like such a refreshing relief arriving here. The Rocky Mountains marks our last significant natural location and the end of our time in the west this summer - not to mention, our last week on the road! I can't believe this trip is coming to an end - it has felt so fast in so many ways!