Sunset at the Rockies

As I'm writing this, the Rocky Mountains are looking down upon me through the windows in the Estes Park Public Library. How did it all happen, you ask.


Monday was the big day. We finally got out of town around one in the afternoon. We drove all the way through Nevada, and made it to Vernal, Utah and spent the night at the Utah Welcome Center, the nicest rest stop I've ever been in. Very clean, multiple bathrooms, that kind of nice.

Vernal is popular for Dinosaur Natl. Park. We got up nice and early and went to check it out. After hassling Lindsey, the National Parks Ranger, we took a trail through amazing rock formations, and if the fossils didn't have painted arrows pointing at them, we never would have seen them. In fact, we walked right by them the first time.

After getting back on the road, we reached Colorado, and also the first campaign sign since Nevada. And lo, it was a McCain/Palin sign. Now, Colorado is as close to Wyoming as I'm going to get for quite awhile, so it wasn't quite refreshing to pull over from the highway and see a fresh deer carcass lying in the dried grass. Well, not a carcass, but fresh deer skin. Its head had been lopped off and was roughly ten feet away, and the hooves had been cut off. What a fun sight, yeah?

We finally finished The Getaway Man, our horrible book of the week, and picked up another at a thrift store in Craig, Colorado.
Two of my favorite things about this thrift store:

1. They had Redemption: The City of Board Game for sale. It's a game about saving souls from the fiery depths of hell. I was very tempted to buy it, except that we're on a road trip with 2 dogs, space is a luxury we don't have.
   
2. On the store window, in front, there's a sign that reads "No Guns." I hadn't thought about bringing a gun into the store anyway, nor had I thought I could find one there to buy, but I'm glad that sign was there to warn anyone who may have had those intentions.

Michael, who has never been to Colorado, was quite excited that we drove through the Rocky Mountain National Forest right before sunset. We watched the sunset from above the tree line, at over 12,000 feet elevation. That was pretty cool.

Here in the Rocky Mountains, elk are the equivalent of mongeese in Hawaii. The first time you see them, you think, "hey look, an elk!" After a while, it's more like, "get out of the road, you frikkin' elk!" Unlike mongeese, they aren't going to squish if you ly run them over; it's pretty hard to run an elk over. They're huge, like horses. So you wait for them to cross the street.

We went to the pool today at the Estes Park Y.M.C.A. Talk about awesome! It's an indoor pool, wide enough to have quite a few lanes, but not deep. The deepest it got in the laned area was 5 feet, so don't worry mom, I never thought I was going to drown.

But the best part- the showers. Nice hot water, enough rack space for towels, rubber mat on the floors so as no one slips. So we were able to get a good workout and a great hot shower (very important when your on the road), for only 5 dollars a person.

We just ate at a great breakfast place called The Egg and I. The food was excellent and the prices were nice and low. We definitely recommend this place for anyone visiting Estes Park. Now we're off to the infamous Stanly Hotel (redrum, redrum) and then to the Estes Park Brewery before we go to visit my family in Fort Collins.
Cheers.