We were up in the morning and packing up.
We did a bit of drive
through Estes Park for a look at the township and found the historic Stanley
Hotel.
We went on a 90 minute tour of the hotel and surrounding outbuildings
and grounds. The tour was heavily weighted towards the paranormal, as Stephen
King was staying there when he got his inspiration for the book “The Shining”
and the ABC miniseries of the Shining was filmed there. The guide told us all the ghost stories;
rooms where your unpacking is done and put away mysteriously while you are out,
a room where a cowboy appears and kisses women on the forehead, children’s
footsteps heard on the 5th floor (except there are only 4 floors…)
and even a cat that sits on your bed, then gets down and disappears before your
eyes… It was a bit of fun and lots of interesting information about the area
and the hotel owners – they were inventors and society people who were making
$100,000 per week from the invention of dry plate photography (that’s $2M in today’s
money). The hotel was built for their society friends to spend summers in the
Rockies and no expense was spared.
We had lunch in the restaurant after the
tour and it was very nice – a late lunch, it was nearly 2pm.
Leaving Estes Park, we followed a river canyon east. There
was a big flood in 2013 and the results were still there. We passed houses that
had their foundations undermined by the floodwaters, crushed cars washed up on
the banks and debris in clumps in the trees. There were excavators working all
along the river, scooping up debris and resculpting the river bank with heaps
of rocks.
Leaving the canyon, we headed north to Wyoming. Rolling
plains as far as the eye can see!
Finally into Cheyenne and a small RV Park on the outskirts.
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