Rocky Mountain National Park

Saturday August 1, 2015              Day 4               Sterling State Park, Sterling CO, site 23 (2nd night)

471 miles (disconnected from Oliver)

 What an excellent day we had.  Took a day trip (471 miles total) to check out Rocky Mountain N.P.  On a weekend, in the middle of summer, near a large metropolitan area (Denver, Boulder, Loveland, Ft. Collins).  So there were lots of people.

We left at 07:30 for a 2.5 hour trip to the RMNP visitor center.  We took I-76 towards Denver and got off at the US-34 exit to Estes Park, the main entrance city on the east side of the park.  The ride to Estes Park was all open prairie and cattle ranches.  We passed through Estes Park without stopping and went through this gorgeous canyon on the way to the visitor center where we did stop. 

 

We got a park map and left.  It was wall to wall people.  The visitor center is just outside the park boundary.  As we entered the Park, we wanted to play tourist and get a picture of the “Entering Rocky Mountain Nation Park” sign, except there wasn’t one.  Even state parks have “Entering fill in the blank State Park”.  So you won’t get an exciting picture of a sign this time.  If I had one, it would go right here ↓.

But, I do have some more really good pictures to come.  We took the Trail Ridge Road which goes from one end to the other end of the park.  It is really US-34.  It is the Rocky Mountain N.P. equivalent of the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier N.P.  It is curvy, has hairpin turns, no guard rails, long lines of cars, 35 mph speed limit, lots of turn-offs with pretty views, and a visitor center half way along at the highest point.  The scenic turnoffs were all full and it was hard to find parking.  The Alpine Visitor Center at the top was completely full and was as congested as an L.A. freeway.  The highest point of the road was there, at 11,796 ft. (3,595 meters for you readers in the rest of the world outside the United States).  We passed the visitor center without stopping.

We stopped at a few lookout turnoffs and do have some excellent photos.

 

On the west side of the park the road turns south and follows the Colorado River.  It is a little trout stream at this point.  And it was beautiful.  We saw a bunch of cars stopped by the side of the road which usually signals a wildlife sighting.  In this case it was an adult cow moose eating vegetation along the banks of the Colorado.  See below.

 

We then stopped at several picnic areas, but they were so crowded that there was no parking spaces, or picnic tables.  It was around noon at this time.  After seeing the moose, we found another picnic spot with some open tables and parking overlooking a beautiful meadow.  We made sandwiches and had some snacks there.

 

We also checked out one of the national park campgrounds along the way to see if we may want to use it as a base for fishing the Colorado in the next few days.  It was one of the ugliest campgrounds we ever saw.  We had other options to pursue and research.

 

Timber Creek Campground, R.M.N.P.

We left the park with the intent of driving around the outside of the park, through some national forests, and checking out some national forest campgrounds along the Cache la Poudre river for some trout fishing for our next destination.  To do that,  we took CO-125 north to Rand.  From there we went on a gravel county road for 13 miles across a plateau bordered by the Owl mountains on the South to hook up with CO-14.  This state highway is a designated a Scenic Highway and I can understand why.  It goes in and out canyons and follows the beautiful Wild & Scenic River called the Cache la Poudre.  I wanted to check out three national forest campgrounds along here that are on the river.  Our intent was to move over there tomorrow, if we liked them.  Otherwise we would move on to Dinosaur National Monument next.  All three had sites on the river, but were a little crowded.  All three were completely full.  But according to the host campers, will clear out on Sunday and we should be able to get a spot.

Along highway 14 Marsha yelled out “Oh look!”  I slammed on the brakes and backed off the road.  There was about 6 bighorn sheep on the side of the road, and a few up the cliff, nibbling on weeds.  One of them was a ram with the curly horns.  The first bighorn sheep I’ve ever seen.  Got some photos.

The rest of the day was back on flat land with a 3 hour drive back to the camper at North Sterling State Park.  After going through a dumpy section of Ft. Collins, and miles of road construction, we entered a Scenic section of the highway.  It went over a huge prairieland for 60 miles.  Sign said no fuel for 60 miles after we left Ft. Collins.  It went through the Pawnee National Grassland.  Wide open spaces you could see for miles.  The sun was low in the sky as dusk was coming on and it made the numerous formations of clouds beautiful.  There were a few thunder cells in the distance with flashes of lightning and rain, but they were miles away.  It was more beautiful than one would think a flat grassland would be.  We were remiss not getting any pictures.

It was dark when we got back at 21:00.  It gets dark earlier here than back home.  At 05:30 in the morning the sun is up.

We drove 471 miles yesterday in 13.5 hours.  The truck got 20.2 mpg.  That is really good for that truck.  It always gets good milage when I’m out west in drier air and higher altitude. 

The pictures will be pretty good from here on.  If you click on them, you can blow them up.
Enjoy.