Of the campers departing that day, I think the only people we beat out of there was the boy scout troup, which isn’t saying much. I've already mentioned this, but it takes at least an hour to get everything packed up and ready to go in the morning; sometimes longer if SB is being especially uncooperative.
Morning oatmeal, still being cooperative.
On the way back down. This is a terrible picture, but the best I could grab with the sun where it was. This is "balanced rock."
We stopped down in Fruita for some gas, and to take a picture of SB in front of the Starvin’ Arvin restaurant. Her preschool teacher always called her Starvin’ Marvin because she was ALWAYS hungry, so we had to send her a picture.
We stopped for coffee at this tiny little drive-thru coffee shop and it was only marginally better than the gas station. Judging by how much of their interior space was being taken by flavored syrups, I don’t think people came there for good black coffee.
The original plan was to drive to Boulder, shop for an hour or two, and then head north into Estes Park for the night. The whole trip was supposed to take about four hours from Fruita. But every time I would check the route, it got longer and longer. Even though it was Sunday, there were some serious traffic problems on I-70, and by the time we got to Vail, it was telling us it was still another four hours until Boulder. One of the issues along the way was the closure of the Eisenhower Tunnel. We still do not know why, but assume there was some kind of accident. We made a game-time decision to head north off the interstate at Silverthorne, skipping Boulder for the day (we wouldn’t have made it before store close anyway), and drive through Rocky Mountain National Park from the west side into Estes Park. This reworked our entire plan, and we canceled a few other reservations since we were going to hit Rocky Mountain today instead of the following day, and decided we only needed to stay in Estes Park one night.
Everything was going swimmingly until we encountered a long stretch of unpaved road under construction. It was as rutted and nasty as you can imagine, and seemed to go on forever. We were unfortunately the lead car, and although we maintained the posted construction speed limit (barely … you have no idea how much it felt like off-roading), with the additional traffic detouring like we were, we accumulated quite the conga line behind us. We finally caught up to pavement again in Kremmling, CO and turned east toward the park.
I have already discussed how much I am nervous about heights, and how much the altitude has been bothering me, so the idea of crazy mountain roads, including, you know, driving on the highest continuously paved road in the United States, which tops out at 12,183 feet, was making me…uneasy (literally?). But we had no choice. I made Matt swear to me that the next vacation that we took had nothing to do with mountains whatsoever.
I buried my head in my book to distract me from everything that was happening outside. I’m sure it was beautiful, but it’s just not for me. We did stop at the Continental Divide at Milner Pass, which also gets the claim of being over two miles above sea level, at 10,759 feet, to take a picture.
Then the ascent continued. We got to the Alpine Visitor’s Center (elevation: 11,796 feet) and Matt made some lame joke about me working up there, to which I replied I’d rather have a job killing bugs for a living. A little beyond that we finally hit the highest point on the road, at the aforementioned 12,183 feet.
Can you see the double rainbows? It was pretty cool, I have to admit.
That little tiny line is the very normal-sized road on these giant mountains.
We stopped a little beyond there at the Forest Canyon overlook (elevation: somewhere around 11,700 feet) to take some pictures, because although I was mildly terrified and felt like vomiting, we might as well get a picture.
Way up in the glacial zone, it was obviously quite cold. SB was beside herself with excitement about seeing the snow on the mountains. She COULD NOT STOP announcing to anyone within 100 feet of us how it “smelled like Minnesota” and how there was “snow like Minnesota” — to her San Diego mind, any and all precipitation and/or weather pattern other than sunshine was Minnesota, and Minnesota alone.
She was literally skipping and jumping her way down the path, and we kept trying to get her to slow down. “MY HEART IS BEATING SO FAST!” she announced excitedly and I was all, “YES, I KNOW, STOP RUNNING WE ARE UP SO HIGH I DON’T WANT TO DIE.”
It turns out all we had to do was show her snow to get her excited about a national park. With how poorly our first two stops had gone, we didn’t think this was going to be a hit for her at all, and basically were stopping solely for Matt’s sake, as he LOVES the mountains. But there she was, bursting at the seams about the entire thing.
Similar to my comfort during airplane descents versus my terror at take-off, I was a happier clam on our way down into Estes Park (which still sits between 7,500 and 7,800 feet). We ate at a little pizza place, and then headed to our camp site at Mary’s Lake.
All over the campground are signs for BEARS. According to Matt, you can judge the type of wildlife in the area by the type of dumpster at a campground, and you could have added some wheels to this one and sent it out onto the battlefield. GREAT. WONDERFUL. I FEEL SO SAFE.
Despite all of this warning about bears, they provided absolutely NO bear lock-ups. I know if you’re tent camping the rule is usually to just leave everything locked in your trunk, but our tent and our food and our trunk were all the same things.
First we were just going to leave all the windows closed, and the food (which we have stored in coolers and medium-sized rubbermaid totes) not up against the windows. Then Matt made some comment about “anything that smells exotic” so I started to have a thing about the fact that, you know, we have an entire bag of shampoos and soaps and hair product that “smell exotic.” “I thought it was just food!” I said to him.
I started to really be not okay with the whole thing, especially with his mixed messages. One sentence was “it will be fine” followed by a sentence about him being “concerned about the canvas [top].” What was I to believe? I couldn’t get images of some black bear shredding the top of the car (and my kid) in an attempt to get at some stupid food or cheap shampoo. I started stuffing things in double plastic bags, and had a bit of horror when I remembered that not only did we have fresh pizza leftovers in the car, but a half-full bag of stinky dog food. Why did this stupid campground not have any place to lock stuff up?
After a few more minutes of me hissing angrily at him (SB was already put to bed up top) we decided to take her (and all of the duffel bags we had stored up there with her) down from the pop-top, which was essentially a tent, and close the top so that the car and the food (and us) were all sealed up.
Of course the dog refused to sleep on his pillow on the front seat and stood huffing and panting at us until finally passing out by my legs. So all four of us slept on the bottom again, boxed in by all of our stuff.
It got pretty cold that night (in the 40s) which made it a bit more comfortable to be all squished together, but I was still up at every sound I heard. Matt turned over and whacked his elbow on the side of the car and I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest because, you know, BEARS.
Spoiler alert: We survived.
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