Rocky Mountain National Park

Our last full day on vacation had only one item on the agenda, to drive around Rocky Mountain National Park. This makes something like our fifth NPS property visited on this trip, all except for Mount Rushmore being very topographically oriented. Since we'd spent an inordinate amount of time in the plains the last few days, it seemed to provide a good opportunity to balance things out if we spent our last day in the mountains, and not just any mountains but some of the biggest around.

From Longmont, the trip to Estes Park and the gateway to the National park took a lot longer than the map would indicate, but maybe after driving 75 to 80 mph everywhere for the last week, my perspective was in need of recalibrating. Mom's Golden Age pass got us into the park for free (normally $20 a carload), which leads me to wonder what is in it for the NPS to offer those things in the first place. They signed her up for one at Wind Cave for a total of $10, and since then we figure we were able to save over $60 in park admission fees, even including yesterday's National Trails Museum, which isn't even an NPS property. The only place that openly snubbed it was Mount Rushmore. It would be one thing if the pass was keeping money from the hands of greedy corporations, but I almost feel guilty taking money from the park service, since you always hear about how much they need the cash. Either this is some kind of mandate that's being forced on them (and that they're forced to promote, which makes it seem unlikely) or they're getting some kind of kickback somewhere down the line.

Anyway, RMNP, as the signs in Estes Park call it, was busy, but not horribly so. It's a big place, so it seemed to have enough room to absorb the throngs of cars without turning into a rolling gridlock like Acadia does at the height of the season. It was a bright sunny day when we got there, and true to form we were done with the visitors center and ready to enter the land of no lunches just about 11:15. We primarily drove up the main road through the park, stopping at one scenic vista after another along the way, each more spectacular than the last as the altitude increased, until we finally rose above the tree line and ended up at the Alpine Visitors Center, about half way along the road. This was the one place in the park that was overcrowded, at least for the time of day that we arrived, around 1:15pm, and it took probably 10 minutes of circling the parking lot before we could snag a space and then another 15 minutes standing in line at the "snack bar" before we could snag an overpriced late lunch.

It was too far to continue all the way to the other side, so we backtracked from whence we came, taking an alternate route towards the bottom by way of the Moraine Park, and bypassing Estes Park by following a long loopy descent through huge canyons along route 7 to get back to Longmont. Just as we were leaving the Moraine Museum the daily thunderstorm caught up with us and we drove through a brief deluge as left the mountains, but by the time we got down to the plains again it had cleared up, although the sky still looked ominous. We found a place in town called Martini's Bistro to have a sumptuous, reasonably priced dinner, and for once were back at the hotel by 8pm already fed.

Reviewing the trip while waiting for dinner, the rodeo seemed to be a big hit, although it seems a distant memory already, and everybody liked Mount Rushmore and the various wildlife we saw at the different parks, buffalo, prairie dogs, etc. This was probably our most ambitious family vacation with the kids ever, and in spite of the frequent bickering and tantrums that come hand in hand with having them so near each other for extended periods of time, I think on the whole it went very well, well enough to consider doing it again. There are other parts of the country that could benefit from doing a similar circuit, too. But let's not rush things just yet, there's still six hours of plane ride to get through tomorrow.

the trail through Wyoming

At the Parkway Plaza, there were no free waffles, but they did have a restaurant on the premises, so we moseyed down there later than we should have for the first real breakfast of the trip. The food was good, there were a few too many flies buzzing around the windows, but this didn't seem to bother anyone but us.

Before we left Casper, we spent the rest of the morning at the National Trails Museum (sorry, "Interpretive Center"), which is a fairly new place that covers the history of all the different westward trails and the throngs of pioneers who travelled over them. Apparently all the major trails converged in Casper because that was the westernmost point to cross the North Platte River before heading into the mountains. The Museum isn't large but has a good amount of interactive displays along with several artifacts, with one area each for the Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, California Trail, etc. The whole westward expansion via the trails ended in the early 1860's with the transcontinental railroad, but in its heyday thousands of people a day were making the trip. The Native Americans started out friendly but ended up getting totally screwed.

Since we'd had a large and relatively late breakfast, we hit the road and headed south, the only other item on the agenda being Fort Laramie, one of the major outposts along the trails. Travelling through Wyoming can be a challenge, as you can drive for hours without seeing any place to eat. This is not necessarily surprising, since you can drive for just as long without seeing any people either, but it makes it problematic when you have kids who begin telling you they're starving about an hour before each meal time should really start. Once we passed through Douglas, there was nothing bigger than Al's Hot Dog truck between there and the Fort, so we went past the turn and drove an extra 20 miles to Torrington, a thriving metropolis of 5,000 near the Nebraska border which at least had a Hardees.

Then it was back to Fort Laramie, which hasn't been a fort for over 100 years but still maintains a significant collection of structures from its prime, many of which have been restored and furnished. The kids weren't terribly excited by most of this, but it gave them a chance to run around, and they did have a few people out among the grounds showing how people lived then, particularly one woman who was washing clothes and got them to try it out.

The storm clouds were looking ominous by the time we were ready to leave, and sure enough within five minutes of getting in the yet another Wyoming scirocco had blown in with driving rain and lightning in every direction. I still wanted to see the trail ruts that were just down the road, so we headed in that direction and took advantage of a brief break in the rain (although not the lightning) to drive down a couple of gravel roads and run up a hill to take a few pictures, but barely had time to get back to the car before it started pouring again. I decided to forgo the Register Cliff site as it was further into the storm front and it was getting late anyway.

We made it back to the highway, the clouds parted and we drove to Cheyenne unimpeded, stopped to have dinner at a Mexican place that wasn't the one we were originally looking for, but turned out to be pretty good anyway. By then it was very late and we still had to get to Longmont for the night, so it was back on the highway and driving in the dark until we got to our hotel just about at 10pm. It seemed like we'd been driving since we got up, which we hadn't, but fortunately our last full day tomorrow stays much closer to home base.