Rocky Mountain National Park Again

We decided to go back to Rocky Mountain National Park and find that dirt road that we missed the other day. As we drove up the interstate, approaching Boulder, Colorado, I looked out and thought how lucky these people are to see such beautiful mountains from the highway.

Back through the beautiful town of Estes Park.

Back to Rocky Mountain National Park, BUT THIS TIME we found the dirt road. It actually starts our as a paved road, which is probably why we missed it the first time.

We were told that in the 1980s a dam broke and flooded the whole town of Estes Park. Huge rocks and bolders came tumbling down from the mountain. We found the area where a lot of rocks and bolders fell. You can see water running down. Can you imagine a flood of water coming down there & all of these rocks and boulders rumbling down?
So up the dirt road we went.

At times it was pretty steep and at ALL times it was dusty! Getting around the sharp curves proved to be a challenge to Bill. Especially with the ruts and the cars who for whatever reason decided to stop on a curve….. I thought we were going to lose it on one curve, but Bill somehow managed to keep the bike “up.”

The dirt road up the mountain turned out to be a good idea and we were so glad we went back again. The scenery is so different.

As we drive up, this is the view that I have.

About half way up, we had to stop and let the motorcycle cool down. We had to drive so slowly because of the cars, the engine couldn’t cool.
As we got closer to the top, the view became even prettier and sometimes scarier. You can see the lodge at the top of the pass in the photo below to the right.

Then it was back down again. We took the same route down that we took the other day, but I think the photos look different because of the lighting. It’s amazing how different the same mountains can look.

You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful view while eating lunch.

I think tomorrow we will take a rest – from riding that is, we still have things we have to do to prepare to move on to our next stop, which we don’t know exactly where that will be yet…..

Rocky Mountain National Park

Next we decided to ride to Rocky Mountain National Park. We went through the town of Black Hawk. We had heard about it from one of our neighbors. It is fairly new to the Denver area and has 24 hour gambling. Since we aren’t gamblers, we just passed through – quickly.

We stopped at Estes Park, which is just outside Rocky Mountain National Park. What a cute little town. The visitors’ center was very friendly and told us of a dirt road we should take, but we never found that road.
We saw a lot of signs like these.

They have a lot of lakes on the way up to the tops of these mountains and no one is ever swimming in them. HMMMM I wonder why, could it be that the lakes are created by snow melt?
This was probably the first mountain pass that we’ve ridden on that had very thin, tall evergreens close to both sides of the road. It’s amazing how different the terrain can be.

In the photo below you see scattered rocks. They call this Tundra Pattern, rocks forming “patterned ground” that is found only in Arctic and Alpine regions where temperatures remain below freezing at least 5 months each year. During the last Ice Age, freezing and thawing of this tundra topsoil forced these patterns to the surface.

It is so strange to be going up a mountain and to look down or over and see the road you were just on…. This is the view I had from the motorcycle over the side of the mountain.

The road was not as scary as the road to Mt. Evan, but the mountain roads out west are sure scarier than the roads back east. Notice the tall sticks on the sides of the road. That’s to help the snow plows to locate the road in high snow!

Treeline occurs where the average temperature is around 50 degrees during the warmest month of the year. Upslope of treeline, conditions make it challenging for tree growth.

Driving thru Rocky National Park we saw all kinds of different terrain.

We reached the top at 12,183 ft. altitude. The view on the backside of the pass was much greener than where we had come from.
It was much colder than the day we went to Mt. Evans so needless to say, it was VERY cold & windy. We turned right around and came back down.



The ride home also proved to be picturesque.