2 May – Rocky Mountains to Cheyenne

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 5^th 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.  

1 May – Rocky Mountains

We awoke to the pleasant sounds of silence that you’d expect in a National Park in the early season with nearly nobody around….and also awoke to the fact that it was a mere -2 (inside the RV) due to the elevation of 8150ft (for our Tassie friends that is about twice the height of Mt Wellington).  So we shattered the silence with the sound of our generator to get the heating going.  The heating works off the “house” batteries and they were low due to being used overnight for lighting etc (in National Parks you can only run generators at certain times etc). We noted last night that there were a couple of sites with tents….bbrrrrrr…. they must have been cold during the night.

Whilst Ros waited for the inside temperature to reach a suitable level before emerging from under the covers, Steve went out to get some stunning early morning photos of the Rocky Mountains, just behind the RV.

We had breaky and set off for a hike to Cub Lake, which is about a 4hr walk (no kickboxing work out needed today J).  Along the way we saw more elk in the fields and more stunning scenery. 

We passed a Parks worker (on horseback) leading some pack mules, carrying gravel for work team who were fixing up sections of the track….really cool to see this.  We eventually got to Cub Lake.  It was quite pretty, although a lot of trees & vegetation has been lost in a fire during last year.  

We continued on the round trip circuit and found that the track was becoming harder to follow and identify, as we were climbing higher into the snow line and the track was covered with snow.  We persevered and got ourselves down to the lower level of the track with no problems.  We past another group of track workers who were clearing trees from another side track.  They had pack llamas with them, quite unusual to see.  The llamas were just lying there quite contently whilst the guys cut down trees using an old fashioned cross-cut hand saw (2x person type).

On the way back to the RV we saw a male Elk by himself in a field.

After walking for about 4hrs, we were quite happy to get the boots off and have a late lunch.  We then drove back into to Estes Park parked up in Spruces RV park for the night and to sit down, rest & plan tomorrow’s adventures J, Steve has decided that there is definitely no kickboxing training tonight LOL.

30 April – Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park

We headed out to Camping World to get some parts for the RV before heading out of Denver. Camping World was amusing – it has everything the RVer could want, including plastic flamingos on stakes to set up outside when you set up camp.

We drove through rolling hills with the sharp peaks of the Rocky Mountains jutting up to our left side and Denver visible on the plains to the right. Denver is known as the Mile High City because at just over 5000ft, it is a mile high. We drove through Boulder and past the Uni of Colorado – looked nice.

About half way to the National Park, we were detoured due to road works and went via Saint Vrain Canyon which was a lovely drive through steep rocks alongside a river. There had obviously been a flood recently as the river had been dug out and the road repaired in places. All along the banks were hunting / fishing shacks and some of them had been quite undercut by the flooding.

As we neared the NP, the trees got more alpine looking and the mountains snow capped. 

The fishing shacks gave way to real hunting lodges and hotel style mountain retreats. We arrived at the City of Estes Park at the gates of the NP and checked in at the Visitors Centre. We found the campsites were still without services due to the cold – its going to be -5 degrees tonight, but we headed into the NP undeterred!

After parking up at a very vacant campground, we went for a walk. Rounding a bend we found the most amazing Elk meadow. There must have been 40 or so Elk lying resting or grazing in the meadow beside a river. We sat on rocks and watched them for ages with the mountains and conifer trees behind them. Lots of photos. 

Finally, at risk of wind chilling we headed back to the RV for dinner. We kicked the generator in the guts and after a few coughs and false starts it got going just fine, so we have heat and light until the 10pm curfew. We are going to heap the blankets on tonight!

After dinner we looked out the window and saw a herd of deer passing by the RV. Some quick pics before they disappeared.

29 April – Denver

Steve was up early to see Eddie and Fee off. Ros was slack and stayed asleep LOL. We decided to have a rest day and do some overdue chores. The RV got an inside spring clean (she looks lovely), we did 3 loads of laundry and Steve made some more repairs to the slideout mechanism as one of the new bolts had snapped already. We relaxed, read, exercised and Ros did some marketing work for her business (Shaping Change). We watched the rabbits outside the window for a bit, cute little things and not at all scared of people. It was relatively warm today – maybe 18 degrees C, which was nice after all the snow.

28 April – Glenwood Springs – Denver

We were up early to head to Denver. We were cruising along the Interstate 70 in blowing snow and we were heading over Vail Pass at 10000 ft when the traffic came to a stop. 

After sitting for a while, cop cars, tow trucks and snow ploughs went past in the emergency lane, so we googled traffic conditions and found there had been an accident. So we boiled the jug and had morning tea while we waited. After about 50 minutes we got going again. The weather was foul, almost whiteout conditions so we drove very slowly. We had to go over Loveland pass at over 11000 ft and that was even worse. Luckily the pass is a long tunnel, but even in the tunnel the road was slushy. 

Once we were over the pass the conditions improved a lot, but still really cold!

We stopped for lunch at Lookout Mountain – the burial place of the famous Buffalo Bill. We stopped by his grave for a look, then took in the amazing views of the Denver area from the lookout. After the lookout we went to a nearby historical mansion for a look around.

We arrived in Denver and Fee and Eddie packed up ready to head off to the airport in the morning. We drove into nearby Golden for a meal and a walk around, then back to the RV park for an early night. They have a 5.30 start.

27 April – Aspen

Up bright and early to greet the morning…..to find that it was snowing outside.  Excellent… snowing at this level, it’ll be definitely snowing up at Aspen!  And it was.  The hour drive to Aspen was quite pretty, when we could see through the falling snow.

Aspen is quite a lovely town.  Very much your typical ski town.  Lots of ski rental places, cafes, restaurants, great mountain vistas etc. 

 It was snowing at the basin level (in the town area),  so we got some gondola passes and took the ride up to the top, which took about 15-20 minutes and covered a fairly long distance.  

We saw people skiing or snowboarding down fairly steep slopes.  At this point there were only experienced to “insane” slopes available at Aspen.  As we only had the day here we decided not to ski but check out if a horse drawn carriage ride or snowmobile tours were available.  Sadly none were, so we had some lunch, walked about Aspen a bit more, had a coffee and rode the gondola again.  

We had a look in a few shops, hoping to catch a glimpse of a celeb, sadly (again) they must have heard we were on the celeb prowl….oh well… their loss J.

We got back to our spot (no sneaky RV’rs in it) And we have now holed up to cook dinner…… while the snow falls around us (outside of course J).

26 April – Gunnison – Glenwood Springs

Up and at em this morning….well… not quite…gotta take it easy whilst on holidays.  Our destination today is the area near Aspen, so we hit the highways right after breakfast.  We saw a lot of “huntn’, shootn’, fishn’” shacks during the morning and a lot of high country cattle farms.

We stopped at Buena Vista for a diner-burger lunch and to refuel the ole girl (she’s a bit thirsty in the hills) then off again.  We went over a couple of mountain passes during the day that took us well into the snow line and over 11,000 feet.  

We even saw some people battling a section of river rapids on those stand-up paddle boards….seems to be the latest craze on the rapids…..seems to me the quickest way to get wet in freezing, cold water! 

We were wanting to go into Aspen from the south and over Independence Pass, which is over 12,000 feet.  Unfortunately it was closed, even though some web sites showed it as open…..not sure what the deal was there and we didn’t find out that it was closed until we were within spittn’ distance of the pass (at the base of the climb up).  

So we had to double back and go to Glenwood Springs (base entry to Aspen), which is North of Aspen.  This section of the trip took us over Freemont Pass (over 11,000 feet) and through some lovely snowed-covered scenery….oh yeah and past a mine tailings dam.

As we were getting close to Glenwood went past a few ski fields.  Most weren’t operating, but one did seem to have some things still going, including a “half pipe” for snow boarders with few brave souls traversing the curves.

We got into an RV park, just a few minutes out of Glenwood Springs, at around 5ish so we decided to grace Glenwood Springs with our presence and go out for a meal. We voted on a lovely little steak restaurant called……wait for it…. Juicy Lucy’s Steak house.  Steve and Eddie were keen to meet this Lucy lady LOL.  We got there and found that there was an hour waiting time for a table, so we walked around the corner to a steak and seafood restaurant called Finns.  Absolutely lovely it was.  Ros, Ed & Fee had the steak & Snow crab special, while Steve had a half side of BBQ ribs (he was wisely advised against the full side…”many men have failed this venture” the waiter said).  The waiter also gave us a few tips on what is good up at Aspen.  He mentioned that Aspen was open for an extended weekend or two due to additional snow fall and to also keep an eye out for various celebs who frequent Aspen.  We went back to our park, all buoyed up with what we could do in Aspen tomorrow, and found that some dude had taken our spot thinking it was spare….even though we’d left the chocks & sewer hose there for when we got back…… so…. we moved him on.