The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta was the last “scheduled” event of our 2021 travels. Rather than just heading straight back to Virginia, however, we thought we’d first visit the eastern Rockies in Colorado, which we had enjoyed during our 2020 travels. We overnighted in Sante Fe, then headed northeast toward Colorado Springs.
Jeannette’s back began bothering her and it took chiropractor visits in three different Colorado towns to set things right, so we generally took it easy during our visit.
In Colorado Springs, we again explored the city’s Garden of the Gods park with its spines of red rock jutting out of the landscape.
We also drove up to the Air Force Academy to see the iconic chapel building. Unfortunately, it was undergoing renovations and was completely covered up, unrecognizable.
Then it was on to Estes Park, gateway city to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), where we stayed for three days. In 2020, the National Park Service had instituted a timed-entry pass system to get into the park, and that had continued into 2021. This year, they had added an additional, more limited pass to get onto the uber-popular Bear Lake Road inside the park. We were able to passes for each of the three full days, but only one which included access to the Bear Lake Road.
We’d hoped to drive the Trail Ridge Road which crosses over the top of the park, but it had been raining at lower elevations for a few days prior to our arrival, and that precipitation had been snow at higher elevations. The Park Service closed the Trail Ridge Road 12 miles in from the entrance, likely for the season. The result: as many visitors as usual trying to squeeze into a much more limited area of the park. However, we made the best of the situation.
The first day, we drove those 12 miles up to Rainbow Curve where we could look down on the eastern valleys of RMNP. RMNP’s deciduous vegetation is mostly aspen trees, which are clustered in tight groups or in a line cascading down a hill side. They turn a brilliant yellow in the fall, and we were there at the peak of the aspen's peak colors.
The trees are sometimes called “quaking aspens” because the stem of each leaf is very thin and can be moved by even the slightest breezes (you can see the leaves quaking in the video below).
The next day, we undertook a couple of hikes in valley areas of the park, including Upper Beaver Meadows, where the trail took us through open fields to an area that had been severely burned in a wildfire a couple years previously, but there was abundant evidence that nature was making a determined effort to establish new vegetation.
We then drove on to an area called the Alluvial Fan, where a sudden flood in 1982 brought an avalanche of large rocks down a canyon. The rocks came crashing down the narrow canyon and spread out in a fan configuration onto the meadow and road below. The ensuing creek and its cascades still flow through the area.
In the park it was the rutting season - when elk bulls fight to take over the dominant elk's harem and mate with elk cows. We saw this sign posted in a number of areas throughout the park.
While driving back to the campground that second day, we passed an Estes Park neighborhood where one bull elk had corralled 30 or more females into his harem. Given the considerable size of the harem, one imagines that the bull had yet to be introduced to the concept of "too much of a good thing."
Our third and final day in the park, we were finally able to enter the Bear Lake Road, gateway to a number of popular park trails and lakes. In 2020, we’d hiked from Bear Lake to Emerald Lake, captured in one of our most commented-on photos from last year.
This time, we decided to hike to Bierstadt Lake. We could have hiked 600 feet straight up from the Bierstadt Lake parking area on the Bear Lake Road. Instead, we took a park shuttle to the Bear Lake parking area, which carried us up another 500 feet in elevation, easing the necessary uphill climb by a lot.
To get to Bierstadt, we hiked about two miles through a forest of evergreens, as well as aspens which had already shaken off their leaves. Finally reaching the lake, we were treated to magnificent views and reflections of snow-sprayed mountains (and a couple of glaciers).
After soaking in the views, we departed Bierstadt Lake and hiked along the ridgeline towards the parking area...
...and arrived at the top of a very steep hillside with breathtaking views of still-yellow aspens dotting the valley!
We could take our time to enjoy the views – and avoid too much exertion – because it was all downhill to the parking area.
On the drive back down the Bear Lake Road, we stopped for a three-quarter-mile stroll around Sprague Lake, the site of an old resort that pre-dated the creation of the national park.
Our final stop in Colorado was Fort Collins, about an hour northeast of Estes Park, where we spent time with our dear friend Marge Corcoran. We’d visited Fort Collins in 2020 and found it a delightful place – the kind of place we might retire to if we ever decided to leave the East Coast and family.
We celebrated Doug’s 70th birthday while in Fort Collins (“Age is only a number,” he’d say. “The number of Advil I have to take after a day of hiking!”). We visited the Fort Collins Art Museum, where two of Marge’s sculptor friends had collaborated on a joint exhibition entitled Beauty and the Beast.
One evening, we went to an intimate performance called Songwriters in the Round at a local hotel. The hotel is owned by a local woman with a passion for music, especially music preserved on vinyl. Each guest room comes complete with a turntable and guests can borrow from the hotel's extensive vinyl record collection.
We also visited the award-winning art gallery where Marge is a part-owner and sells handmade glass art. The gallery hosts a number of local artisans and also offers art classes.
Then, it really WAS time to start east toward home, a drive that would take us about three weeks. More about that in our next blog entry.
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