2010 Trip Part 3

The momentum on my vacation posts disappeared!  I have to finish them, just for my own sake -- my blog is sort of my travel log.

Let's see, I left off with southern Utah and the National Parks.  Ha ha, that is also where I started these posts.  Oh I have a long way to go!  Next we drove from America's playland, Moab, UT, to somewhere near Greely, Colorado.  GORGEOUS scenic drive the entire way!!!  I know I have said that several times, but it's true.  I couldn't even get into a book that day.  Our faithful old van ground up the freeway over Vail Pass with a worn-out bearing, creating a huge racket, but the Lord got us to our destination.  While we waited for work on the van to be done, we visited Platteville Baptist Church and had a good meeting.  The preacher and his wife, the Smiths, treated us to a late-night buffet where the girls innocently and adventurously tasted Rocky Mountain oysters. *blechhh*  They decided "oysters" are pretty good, even if these were rather chewy.  *~~shudder~~* Those folks were a blessing!  One of the church members, bless his heart, loaned us a car so that we could spend the next day visiting Rocky Mountain National Park.

If you ever get close to Denver, you must see RMNP.  My camera just does not do the place justice -- it is so huge and so magnificent, and it made me feel like such an infinitesimal part of God's creation!  There was still snow in spots -- in mid-July -- and we needed our jackets as we climbed to the 12,000 ft+ peak of  ... can't remember the name of it...  That's what I get for not writing things down.  Anyway, it really did seem like we had our heads in the clouds.  Delicate arctic plants lined the trail, and we saw several animal species that were new to us.  Real campers and hikers could spend weeks here, but we just stayed one day.  We like the convenience and comfort of a motel room, especially when it is raining. :D

Here's Amy, the indomitable photographer, scaring me to death again:



And the resulting photo:

We parked and took a bus to a trailhead, where we met dozens of soaking wet hikers.  Assuming they must have all ducked under the Alberta Falls,  we adventurously headed up the trail in the drizzle.

The bus ride was as big an attraction to some people as the scenery was to the rest of us!

This is my kind of hiking, a nice smooth path with little elevation gain:



A rare photo of Amy without her eye behind a camera:



Gummy worm break!  It's important when hiking, to keep up one's energy.



John Garrison at Alberta Falls:

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Would you believe that guy was planning, at one time, to be a TV weatherman? :)

We finished the hike soaking wet, not from the falls, but from the drizzle, like all the hikers who had gone on before us.  More exploring, another bus ride, a great picnic, and a drive through Estes Park finished the day off.  We had as much fun watching people as we did viewing God's handiwork.  :)

Had we known our van repair was going to take the entire morning of the next day, we'd have invited Wendy and her daughter, Laurie, to come and visit us in Greely!  But we expected it to be done first thing in the morning.  The motel pool kept the kids happy, comfortable, and entertained in the meantime.  The longer stay in Colorado required a rerouting of our itinerary, and we missed Mount Rushmore.  Instead we made a beeline for eastern North Dakota.

Stay tuned for more excitement!