Day Twenty-Six - Rocky & Bullwinkle National Park

Upon waking up, I realized two things. 1) That the campsite we wanted wasn't occupied. None of them were. It was us, an RV thing, the campground hosts and another tent. One family came after us. That's it. Just one. We were VERY unhappy.

Oh and 2), the campsite we wanted was flooded with light from the very bright bathrooms.

We woke up early. before sunlight. My favorite time in the morning, actually. I love it. We were packed up and ready to go by 6:30.

Traffic into Salt Lake City was pretty heavy. There was some stupid morning show on the radio. It was horrible. I think radio DJs are one of the lowest forms of life on earth. It's very incredible. Makes me embarrassed to be a human.

Western Utah and eastern Colorado were pretty much the same. There were some differences, but mostly it was a lot of driving.

I don't want to belittle Colorado. It's pretty. I guess it all just looked like Arizona, but all crumpled up.

We drove on Route 40, yes the same Route 40 as earlier on the trip and also the same one that goes through Hagerstown. I really like Hagerstown. The park is beautiful. Anyway, we passed a ton of neat towns that used to be big tourist places before Route 80 came in. Dinosaur was neat. All the street names are dinosaur names! Neat! Some broken down motels and just fun.

Route 40 taunted us with signs: 56 miles until the next gas station... 43 miles... 36 miles.... Luckily, we had a full tank. No cell either. No cars. We were very alone on a very lonely road. I liked it though. Driving like that makes me quite happy.

We took Route 34 to go through Rock Mountain National Park. It was the only way to get to Estes Park, our home for the night. We drove about 10 miles then came to a toll booth. $15 to enter the park. Sure it's good for 7 days, but come on! We scrounged the money and bit the bullet. If we didn't have it, we would have had to  drive a couple hundred miles out of our way. We wouldn't have made it to anywhere near Estes Park.

The park itself was kind of boring at first. I thought, "oh great, more mountains."  But then we played with a ground squirrel and everything was ok! Yay!

We climbed higher and higher until we were above the tree line. It's a tundra up there. They don't get rain or snow much because it's above the clouds. We actually saw birds BELOW us! I was a little scared. You know? Me and heights.

Getting out of the car was like stepping into January. The winds made it feel like it was below freezing. The snow on the ground, in patches, didn't help.

The dissent down to the bottom was quicker than going up, but pretty too.

This brought us out to Estes Park, near our campground. Mary's Lake. It's a nice place. Pretty rustic. $25 a night for a tent. But it's better than a motel. And there's internet here.

The town of Estes Park is nice. Kind of like Ocean City, but with mountains instead of the ocean. Got Chinese food. Very good, but everyone who worked there was Scandinavian. Very strange. I just don't get it.

I wish there was more to write. I know the posts haven't been so interesting lately. Maybe the trip is just becoming normal to us. It's all new, but everything is new. We're used to new things, so new things don't seem so new. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Stats
Miles traveled today: 515
Hours on the road: 11
Miles traveled in total: 8551

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)