After a restful night from the hike in the snow we woke up with visions of snow with temperatures of 1 degrees feeling like minus -13. Yes I said that right.
As we started to ease into our day we had plenty of laughs from the day before. We then contemplated what would our adventure be today. Nothing was planned, but we came across a brochure of a guided tour of The Rocky Mountain National Park in a heated van. That was going to be very important. We booked it at the last minute with the tour company calling the driver for his availability since we were the only tourists for the tour. Our guide was Alec who was very knowledgeable about the park. Today’s sky was blue without any hints of clouds.
We saw beautiful snow-capped mountains as well as some Elk.
We then saw one of many Ponderosa Pines with their reddish bark.
The snow-capped mountains with a clear blue sky made for some beautiful pictures.
We then learned about the Aspen Pine with it’s white bark.
Our guide then dropped us off to explore at one of the passes that were closed to cars. We saw a few skiers headed up the closed road.
These were our views at just over 9,000 feet.
In this upper section of the park we saw Englewood Pines which has a whitebark too.
Missy and Brandee walking down the closed road.
We then ran across some mule deer in the road.
Next, we went to Sprague Lake where we saw guys playing hockey on the frozen lake. Mr. Sprague was the first habitant to the area and also a big ambassador to bringing others to the area.
After our tour, we went for some lunch for barbecue, brisket, and pecan-crusted trout. The trout was very tasty. Our next stop would be the Stanley hotel, where Jack Nicholson stayed in the movie The Shining. We learned that Stephen King wrote the whole movie in one night in room 217 of the hotel. The hotel is considered haunted. It is told that Jim Carrey stayed in room 217 while filming Dumb and Dumber with the Stanley Hotel being the Danbury Hotel in the movie. One night around midnight, Jim Carrey checked out without any explanation. Wonder if he saw something ghostly that night?
Notice the wind blowing the snow on top of the mountains.
We concluded our day with plenty of shopping from the local stores in Estes Park, Colorado. I would recommend Estes Park and The Rocky Mountain National Park as a place to visit.
OtterTales 