Goodbye to Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park

It’s Phaedra here ready to say goodbye to Rocky Mountain National Park.  But before I do an apology needs to be stated to Mom.  On my first posting, I failed to mention the most important part of the trip out.  It happened on the fourth day in Kansas. Are you ready!!!! Mom drove.  Yes, really!  I’m not kidding.  She drove 140 miles and even pulled into a gas station and parked between 2 huge trucks carrying those blades for wind

Wind Turbine and home!

turbines.  I had to take a picture of Mom driving and Dad riding.

High Park Fire

Back to the present.  The first week here was filled with tornado warnings, and hail just down the mountain. This week was the largest fire in Colorado’s history.  So far it’s burned 46,000 acres.  We drove to Loveland to have work done on the car and drove through smoke in the canyon.  We could smell the smoke even though it was 30 miles away.  Mom took some great pictures of the black smoke from Estes Park.  It has not been contained yet.

Lambs

This week at the park has been a week of seeing great animals!  We saw eight moose on the west side of the mountains and two of them were

Rams

babies.  Mom and Dad kept going with us back to a place called Sheep’s Lake looking for bighorn sheep.  They finally saw 2 rams and the next day they saw 7 females with 5 babies.  That was so exciting.

Turkey Mom

Carla and Papa

Bull Elk

Turkey Babies

Dad’s niece, Carla, from Sarasota, came up and stayed in a cabin at our campground. They had a good time but did not take us with them. Carla loved Coffee on the Rocks (without us, of course!).  They saw beavers, baby owls, a mother and 4 baby wild turkeys. a marmot, and lots of elk and deer. 




They visited a place called the Aluvial Fan area where there was a huge flood.  This Alluvial Fan Lawn Lake Flood area is really

interesting.  On July 15, 1982 a humongous flood happened there.  See, there was this time called an Ice Age which made glaciers which pushed rocks and boulders along as well as carved areas out.  The glacier ended in what is called a snout.  The longer the glacier stays in that same place without retreating, the more the boulders and debris collect.  This “terminal moraine” (what the rangers call it) broke through after thousands of years and caused a flood which had a whole bunch of stuff in it like huge boulders and really big trees!  When it broke, the town of Estes Park was flooded to a depth of six feet!  Last year, just

Aluvial Hopping

the melting snow in June on top of the mountain caused the Big Thompson River to go out of its banks and flood the parking lots along the river

Right before Mama stepped in!

so imagine if 29 million gallons of water swept down the mountain.  WOW, I wouldn’t want to be there when it happened.  Rangers got people out of the campgrounds in time to save all but 2 people.  I never realized how dangerous camping can be - tornadoes, floods, charging elk.  Just call me a super adventurer.  Anyway, the Alluvial Fan area is really beautiful and you can crawl all over these huge boulders and stick your paws in the cold Roaring River.  If you hear a loud roar, though, RUN!!!

Dream Lake

Bear Lake Hike

Mama and Papa, also, went on a great hike up at Bear Lake. They drove up through construction up to the lake and hiked up to Nymph Lake and Dream Lake. It was only a couple miles, but it was steep and at 9,000 plus feet. It was a beautiful day and they were exhausted when they got home.  We got short walks that evening!




A really cool thing happened at the campground that we heard about -  but none of us saw it.  There were 2 sightings of a mom and baby black bear plus.... are you ready???????... a mountain lion.  All my dad said was “%@#$%^^&&&^&” whatever that means.


Here are some things that we like to remember and maybe you would like to see them too:

Two Towers

Trail Ridge Summit

Wyoming Ground Squirrels

Baby Great Horned Owl

Bull Moose

Top of the World - 14,000'

                                       

We all hate saying goodbye to Colorado as we head to the Grand Tetons and our friends from Ding Darling, Patsy and Bob.  But, we will be returning to this park late in August which does make leaving here easier.

For now, it’s goodbye to Coffee on the Rocks, Estes Park, Hummers zooming and chasing us every time we go out of the camper door, and Rocky Mountain Sunsets!

Wags from Phaedra the Phantastic and my wee sister Zoe!