Colorado

Saturday brought us down into Colorado from Cheyenne; we drove over to the Rockies through Golden, up through Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park and down to our hotel. A LONG day! Spectacular views – this highway is the “highest continuous auto road in the US”. We were delighted on the way down from the summit at 11,800 or so to see a herd of elk right beside the road. Must have been at least 30 cow elk and we say only one large bull. Well, did he have a big responsibility!

And later on down we saw a cow moose and her calf. Good wildlife sightings on this highway.

Moose Cow & Calf

Sunday to Mt. Evans – quite a drive up from the Denver area at ~6,000’ to the end of the road at 14,172’. We then walked another 100’ up to the summit – Chris kept getting compliments for being a real trooper wearing her protective boot. Great views all around, a very nice trip.

Bristlecone Pine forest

We dropped down to a lower elevation for lunch, then over to Golden for a tour of the Coors brewery. They merged with Miller in 2008, for those of you who hadn’t been aware of this. They have a nice audio tour ending up with tastings of several beers. We liked several of them! {Chris wasn’t so sure she would like Coors beer}. We took a round-about route to get to the tasting tour parking lot and learned that the “factory” is HUGE – five miles long – very impressive.

Colorado has been somewhat of a culture shock for us. After having been in lonely prairie country for several weeks we are now on the outskirts of a very large city. What a change! We got quite used to driving on highways with no other traffic; guess that we will have to kiss that experience good bye until some other time – our route back to Los Angeles will not be on lonely roads (except for a scenic byway day after tomorrow).

Monday we enjoyed an interesting tour of the state capital building in Denver, then drove out for a visit with Pat and Roger Maddaford. Had a nice visit with them! Their home is our in the country with gorgeous views of the Mountains.

View from Pat & Roger's living area

Tuesday we drove to Grand Junction, with a scenic bypass down through Leadville and up over Independence Pass, the highest pass in the US on a major highway at 12,095’ – not sure how this claim stands with the Rocky Mountain Park road’s claim, oh well. Great views from up there.

After lunch in Aspen, we made our way to Grand Junction.

We’re on our way home.