Sunday, 7/10, Rocky Mountain National Park, Travel from Glendale, CO to Grand Junction, CO

Arie, Josh, and I woke up to go to the 7:30 morning services at the synagogue. 
After that, we stopped at Home Depot to look for a replacement handle for the
BBQ cover.  The width between the holes are not a standard kitchen cabinet
handle size, so I wound up getting two ceramic cabinet knobs.  They're loose,
since the bolt expects a cabinet between it and the knob, but I think it should
work.  The bolt is in tight, and hopefully it's strong enough to withstand the
heat.

We packed up a bit, and then Karen and I went to do some errands to replenish
for the few days we'll be away from anything kosher.  The pizza place opens at
11:00, so we figured we'd stop there and get lunch when heading out.  We got
there at about 11:30, and it took them 15 minutes to make up a couple of pies
for us to go.



Right after we left the hotel, Karen noticed the car in front of us with Rhode
Island plates.  Why is that special, you ask??  Well, before we left home, Bob L
told me to track license plates.  He said I would most likely see 48 states -
all except for Hawaii and Rhode Island.  The former for obvious reasons, the
latter since there are so few cars there and we would be so far from there.  So
I had to take a picture.  (I like the effect of the Jaguar license plate holder
on the Kia car.  His other car must be a Jaguar!)



Yesterday I thought we would head to Colorado Springs, but after looking at the
map, it seemed to make more sense to go to Rocky Mountain National Park.  It is
supposedly the #1 Colorado tourist attraction.  And it's a bit more west than
Colorado Springs (i.e., closer to Grand Junction, CO, where we would be staying
overnight).  So we headed over to Rocky Mountain National Park.  The drive
took us thru Boulder, CO.  There was no official confirmation of a 'Mork from
Ork' sighting, just lots of cyclists.  This is where the pros train, I believe. 
We got there at around 1:45 - at the Beaver Meadows entrance.



 

We stopped at the Visitor Center at the beginning to find out a good strategy
both for seeing as much as we could and for being in the right direction to get
to Grand Junction.  So the park ranger suggested the Trail Ridge Road.  We
didn't want to really do any hikes, but were open to the possibility of some
short ones.  This road would have that.  We stopped at the first picnic area to
eat the pizza.  There was a downpour from the time we left the visitor center to
the time we got to the picnic area (Hidden Valley).  It had stopped by the time
we got there, and there were some tables under a cover, so we snagged one of
them.  We had some interesting visitors during lunch.  The chipmunks don't look
like the ones at home.  They look like they live downstream from the nuclear
plant.  They're about the size of a small rat.

Alvin?

The scenery was spectacular.  From all the interesting mountains, to the
wildlife, to the snow capped peaks, to the waterfalls from melting snow.  We
tried to do a comparison between this and the Badlands National Park, but it was
too hard to pick a winner.  Arie and I were leaning towards this park because of
the snow in July and the wildlife.  The temperature got down to about 45F at
the lowest that I noticed.



 
 
 

Get some winter clothes on you silly kids!

The road twisted all around, getting very close to the edge of steep cliffs at
times, with no barriers!!  Amazingly, there was a bike rider that was hugging
the white line right at the edge of huge drops, with no barriers.  One slip, and
that would be it for him.  Yikes!


This trail gets up to a little over 12,000 feet elevation.  Here is some proof
of that, thanks to the GPS.  Not quite at 12K, but somewhere where I was able to
pull over and take a picture of it.  On the backend, we actually drive thru a
bit of cloud.  Arie observed that the difference between driving thru fog and
driving thru a cloud is that fog comes down to meet YOU, but to drive thru a
cloud, YOU have to go up to meet IT!

Note the 'Elev' - 11,754

Elk

Moose

We got to the end of the trail at around 4:30.  It's about a four hour drive to
Grand Junction from there.  We originally thought we would stop for a BBQ on the
way, but no one was really hungry since we finished lunch so late.  So we
decided to drive thru.  The route follows the Colorado River.  It often
crisscrosses under the highway.  When we hit Glenwood Canyon (a pretty cool
drive, with the Colorado River following alongside us), it started pouring. 
Torrential rains.  You could see the river started to get really rough.  It
rained for about an hour.  I saw the clear skies up ahead and you could tell the
sun was trying to pop thru.  Sounding like Sam Champion (but not looking like
him), I told Karen I thought conditions were favorable for a nice rainbow.  Then
a few minutes later a beautiful full arc rainbow formed to the side rear of the
van.  I passed the camera back to the boys .  Unfortunately, the rear defroster
wires got in the way.  But you can still make it out.  Then a little while
later, right to my side I see another rainbow.  You could see the entire thing,
from one end to the other.  And if you look carefully, there is actually another
rainbow right next to it.  It was much lighter than the big one.  I was tempted
to pull over to get a better picture, but it was probably a little too dangerous
to do that on this road.



So we got to the hotel in Grand Junction at around 8:45.  Karen made a pot of
pasta and melted cheese and/or sauce on it for whoever wanted.  Tomorrow we will
head to the Arches National Park in Moab, UT.  It should be a pretty quick
drive.