Road Trip - Days 7 & 8

I got up Friday morning and made my last walk down to Starbucks for my coffee.  I tried to soak it up because I knew I would miss it.

We loaded up and headed out of Estes Park. 

We made a quick stop in Boulder (there was a brand of shoes in a store there that Brian wanted to try on before buying) and then headed to Cañon City to check out the Royal Gorge.

We came here on a family vacation when I was a kid and I still remember bits and pieces of it.  The "welcome center" is HUGE now and they've added a seated zipline where you can go across the canyon and lots of other things for you to stay and spend money on.

We stood in  line to get on the gondola to ride across and then walk the bridge back.  When we got in line, it was raining a little.  After a few minutes we heard thunder, so they ended up shutting the gondola down.  We headed down to the bridge to walk across.  Well, let me just say, I have a thing with heights.  I thought i would be fine if i stayed in the middle, didn't look over the edge and just walked myself briskly across. NOPE.  I got about a 1/4 of the way across and i could feel the bridge moving ever so slightly.  I was having a full on conversation with myself about sucking it up and going across and then the bridge would move again.  I could not do it.  Brian and the boys were up ahead of me and I told them I had to turn around.  I was pretty mad at myself. 

While they walked across (and Brian took pictures of the boys for me), i stayed to the side.  I remembered when we were here when i was a kid, we rode this thing down into the gorge that was on a track.  It wasn't there anymore, but they had this little look out thing where I could see the remains of the tracks.

We didn't stay very long, but it's one of those bucket list things I guess. :)

We started the drive home and decided just to get as far as we could that night and find a hotel.  When we got close to Texas, it was raining hard so we ended up stopping in Dumas for the night.  We got up the next morning and the boys and I grabbed some breakfast.

We had planned on stopping at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo (we did it on our first road trip, but Hudson was 4 and didn't remember going).  There was a Walmart across from our hotel, so we ran over to get some spray paint.  Hudson had been asking for some sunglasses to go with his fedora (not even kidding) so we picked up these $2 babies.

We got to Cadillac Ranch with our spray paint and were ready to leave our mark!

After we parked and got out, I noticed people standing outside their cars trying to get the mud off their shoes or just throwing their shoes into a bag and changing them altogether... needless to say, I wasn't getting a good vibe from it.  There's only one little gate in and out and it was SO muddy from the night before, you HAD to walk right through a giant puddle to get in.  People were standing right outside the gate scraping shoes, trying to rinsing off in the puddles.... UGH.

We decided to not do it this year and give it another go next time were back that way.  

We got back in the car and headed towards home and made it about 8:30 Saturday night.  

We had such a great time and I'm already looking at where to go next year. :)

Days 7 & 8 video

Road Trip - Day 6

On Thursday I woke up feeling pretty crummy which was sad, because it was our 15th wedding anniversary (our anniversary always seems to fall during our road trip).  Our plan was to explore Estes Park, so we took our time getting ready and it was an easy morning.  We headed over to the Estes Park Tram.  

The cool stained glass window at the tram office.

Waiting in line with Hudson and his fedora. :)

It was such a pretty view!  You could see all of Estes Park and a lot of RMNP.

Fifteen years with this guy - he's such a great husband and daddy! Love him!

I love this picture so much!

 

Headed back down...

After the tram, we headed over the the Stanley Hotel.  If you aren't familiar with it, it's the hotel that inspired the movie "The Shining".  

Stephen King stayed here one night in 1973 and that's where the idea of "The Shining" came from.  We took the 90 minute tour and Brian and I really enjoyed it.  The history of the hotel and how it came to be and F.O. Stanley was ll very interesting.

We stayed after the tour and had lunch at the hotel.

I still wasn't feeling super great, so we ended up back at the condo and took the afternoon to rest ( I don't know what they did - I took a nap). :)  We walked the 2 minutes over to Subway for dinner...

And then spent the evening cleaning up, doing laundry and packing since we were leaving the condo in the morning.

Day 6 video

Road Trip - Day 5

On Wednesday morning, we got up early so we could get a parking spot to walk around Bear Lake.  The boys were tired, but it was worth it.  The drive into the park with the moon up was beautiful!

We drove to the Bear Lake parking lot and there were already people there and it was about 1/3 full (at about 7:00 in the morning).   This was my favorite day scenery-wise.  Bear Lake was calm and absolutely stunning.

There were quite a few trailheads that converged at trail lake, so we decided to do one more hike since the rain wasn't supposed to hit for another couple of hours.  We started our hike to Alberta Falls and up ahead there were elk right on the path!

We took a quick rest stop by the river on the way.

Alberta Falls!

We sat down to have a drink and snack and there were chipmunks everywhere.  Sadly, you could tell people feed them all the time even though the park asks you not to.  There weren't scared of us at all and would walk right up to you (you can see more in the video below).

 After our hike, we stopped at a little discovery center to check out the exhibits.  The view from the parking lot - RMNP is just gorgeous.

By this point, the parking lots for hiking trails had filled up and we had seen a lot of the park, so we decided to go back into town to look around and finish up our souvenir shopping.  We stopped at a taffy place and bought a box of taffy with mixed flavors.  They had a salted caramel flavor and OH MY, it was the best taffy I had ever had.   

In one of the stores, Hudson came upon a fedora and just went crazy over it.  Brian bought it for him and as you will see, he wore it the rest of the trip. :)

Playing some solitaire in his new fedora. :)

Day 5 video

Road Trip - Day 4

On Tuesday I had planned some hiking in RMNP.  Everybody was tired, so I left them sleeping...

to walk down to get some coffee.  Starbucks was just down this riverwalk about 5 minutes.

The sun was out and it was such a gorgeous morning!

After I grabbed my coffee, I went back and got everybody up so maybe we could get some hiking in before the midday rain came. We headed into the park and I was already excited about seeing some scenery instead of fog! :)

We were going to do the hike around Bear Lake, but they weren't kidding about the parking lot filling up.  If you aren't there early, you don't get a spot, and there's no where to turn around, so you just have to hope that someone else was pulling out of a spot.  Well, no luck.  So we check a couple other trails and their lots were full too.  After a little bit of discussion, Brian and I decided to try Trail Ridge Road again since it was a clear day and we could see.   There was a lot of traffic and some delays, but we got to the Alpine Visitors Center right around lunchtime so we decided to stop and eat.  These boy really got  kick out of the puffy chip bags. :)

The view was MUCH better than the day before. 

We left the visitors center and decided to go through the rest of the park to see what we could see and visit Grand Lake on the other side.  Hudson didn't last very long. :)

We stopped at at trail head to Adams Falls.  It was starting to drizzle, but we needed to hike!  So everybody threw on their rain jackets and off we went.

It was a short, but very pretty hike.

We met a cute little family that took our picture.

They told us there was a pretty meadow not far down the trail so we decided to head that way.  The rain started to get slightly heavier and the thunder sounded closer, so we rushed our way down, I snapped a picture and then we headed back to the car.  

Because being struck by lightening wasn't a vacation story I wanted to tell. #canigetanamen

We then drove into the cute little town of Grand Lake. (Mind you, we drove less than 10 minutes, got out and the sun was shining.  So weird.)

We went into a cute little store and for some ice cream and a candied apple.

Grand Lake is a lot smaller than Estes Park as far as the town goes, but it does have the gorgeous lake with some beautiful homes around the shore. We really liked it.

We left Grand Lake and took our last pass over Trail Ridge Road, stopping at the lookouts to get some pictures.

We saw a ton of elk that day - a few up close, but ended up seeing about 30 or so.

And we saw a moose - the first real life moose I've ever seen!  I was hoping to see a bull moose with some big ol' antlers, but this little lady was still pretty cool!

 We got back that night and played some more cards before hitting the sack to be up early the next day!

Road Trip - Day 4