Day 5

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States: Colorado
Miles driven: 0
Miles hiked: 0
Slept: In M’elaine’s condo rental in Estes Park.
10 words or less: RMNP/Grand Lake drive, 12,183 elevation. Lovely lake area luncheon.

Do Not Approach Wildlife

To rest our legs yet maintain our elevation, we took a lovely Sunday drive from Estes Park to Grand Lake. Undulating swaths of Trail Ridge Road snaked up, over and through the mountains. It crosses the Continental Divide and, topping out at over 12,000’, is the highest continuously paved road in the US and many other boring facts you don’t give a crap about. We had a nice stroll through this incredibly quaint and pretty town’s shops and even dipped our toes in the lake, at the headwaters of the Color…Oh hell. It was a pretty lake on top of a fucking mountain. We had lunch, ate ice cream, chocolate covered strawberries and horsed around with Pat.

On the way back we encountered a massive heard of elk. These idiot tourists were wandering around right in the middle of the heard. They’re not koala bears! Back off! We all judged them harshly for approaching the wildlife. Morons. I fully expected to hear “8 tourists were gored by elk off Highway 34 today” on the news that night, but we watched the Olympics instead, so who knows for sure.

Once we got back to the lodge, us three hikers, M’elaine, her dad Jim and I, took some time and put up our tents in the yard. They needed to do a trial run since it was a new tent for them and I wanted to compare sizes. Just in case we had to, we could try to fit in one tent. It turns out we could all fit in my tent, but as you can see by the photos, we were uncertain the elk would fit. After I spent 20 minutes taking close up shots of her, I realized the hypocrisy of my harsh judgment of the morons on the mountain. In my defense she started it!