Rocky Mountain High

Our final week in the Lower 48 States was spent in the beautiful Rocky Mountains (cue John Denver soundtrack). The Rocky Mountain National Park is breathtaking, both figuratively and literally – being between 8,000  and 12,000 feet of altitude lets your lungs work a bit harder than at sea-level. We are still in the heart of cowboy country, noting on our way to the National Park a church called “God’s Country Cowboy Church”. I was going to suggest a Men’s ministry called “Chaps Welcome”.

We stayed in Estes Park, at the entrance to the National Park and were there over the 4^th July holiday. Town was therefore really crowded, with festivities including fireworks, a “Patriotic” concert and another car show (our favourite thing!). There were many many tacky souvenir shops mostly selling T-shirts, interspersed with cowboy grills, a shop specialising in giant belt buckles (no, Mike wouldn’t buy one) and ice-cream shops galore.  We saw a drive-thru coffee shop advertising that it is the “Home of the Chicken Fried Latte”. We were way too scared to investigate this.

We escaped to the relative quiet of the National Park, doing a walk in the Bear Lake area which included a number of beautiful perched lakes. We spent most of the walk at around 10,000 feet so going uphill was a slow affair, with many scenic stops to admire the view and allow my lungs to catch up.  Coming down to a waterfall we heard loud shrieking which was a little alarming. A couple of women walking towards us said cryptically “oh, that will be Amy”. Huh? Our curiosity was soon satisfied as we rounded the corner to find a couple passionately kissing near a big sign saying “Amy, marry me”. She said yes, apparently.

Dream Lake - Rocky Mountain National Park

Mills Lake- Rocky MNP

Alberta Falls. Amy says "yes"

Next day we drove the Trail Ridge Road through the park, this being the highest paved road in North America topping out at 12, 183 feet. It includes some sheer drops, but happily a few more guardrails and road shoulders than other roads we have driven on. I did have to stop several times to disengage my fists from the steering wheel.  We saw a magnificent male elk with a large rack of antlers, and thought this would make an excellent trophy above the telly. Perhaps that would be a little gauche?

Life on the edge.

How is it that when we hate edges so much we just keep finding them?

Trail Ridge Rd - RMNP

Pika (not Pickachu for the gamers out there, but looks somewhat similar without being yellow).

Moving right along, we headed south for Snowmass, a ski resort high in the Rockies, near Aspen. At this time of year it is turned over to hikers and mountain bikers. When planning the trip, we had in mind that we could do some mountain biking; however after seeing rider after rider roaring down the slopes with full face helmets and body armour we decided this was well out of our league. Instead we did a great hike to Maroon Bells and were fortunate to see a moose with calf hiding in the shrubbery.  Mike was busy being enthralled by the airport with row after row of private jets. It seemed like there were hundreds. We didn’t see any matching celebrities, but never mind.

Maroon Bells (for the colour blind).

For the non colour blind.

Columbine flower.

Aspens at Aspen.

Moose Mum watches.

On our last morning we went white-water kayaking in “duckies” – inflatable single person rafts, which was a heap of fun. I developed a particular talent for finding rocks to get beached on. Trying to avoid some ‘traffic’ I got myself well and truly stuck on a pile of rocks at the entrance to a chute of water. Everyone else in the group, including Mike, paddled along, crashed into me, bounced off and sailed merrily down the chute, wedging me higher and higher on the rock with each crash. I jiggled and rocked and pushed and pulled and bounced to no avail, just had to wait for one of the guides to come and rescue me. I was “beached as, bro” (no-one even offered me a chp).

Near the end of the trip, we pulled into the side so that the guide could explain how we were going to negotiate the waterfall. Sorry, what was that? A waterfall? What do you mean WATERFALL?????? (cue sound of internal organs loosening). I made it through by the seat of my Big Girl Pants – actually it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be.

Action Girl entering the waterfalls.

Mike coming out the bottom of the falls.

Our trip was slightly marred by the presence of America’s Rudest Woman. So far the Americans we have met have been overwhelmingly friendly, polite and lovely people. This woman was something else. After a couple of rapids we stopped to regroup and she complained loudly that she was miserable because she was getting wet. I hate to break it to you Pet, but water will do that. Against advice from the guides, she and her (longsuffering) husband insisted on taking a double kayak – this takes co-ordination and teamwork, not easy for novice paddlers, particularly in white water. As you can imagine it was a disaster, and at one point got very dangerous as they barrelled at high speed into a head height log and flipped over. They survived, one of the guides took Madam into her boat and left Hubby to his own devices. Whereupon Madam spent the time berating him over and over for his incompetence (like, she was a total expert – NOT).  At the end of the trip I saw her struggling to get her wetsuit off so thought I would be kind and assist. I noticed she was trying to get the wetsuit off over her boots, which was never going to end well. Just to make it more difficult she hadn’t unzipped the legs of the wetsuit. I suggested that she might take her boots off first, but she turned on me in a rage, hissing at me that she couldn’t have done that because her boots were under her wetsuit. I slowly backed away, wondering if it would have been a good idea to have brought the bear spray after all. It brought to mind the Far Side cartoon of a man sitting on the edge of the bed looking at a big sign saying “Pants first, then shoes”.  Oh dearie me.

This afternoon we drove back into Denver passing through the town of Gypsum, which caused us to wonder if they spend their weekends getting plastered?

That wraps up another Circuit of our trip. We’re 3 months in, still having a great time and still talking to each other! We are about to go to Canada and Alaska, first stop Johnstone Strait to go sea kayaking with orcas. Mike assured me that he ticked the “orca sighting” box on the booking form. So we shall see.