Rocky Mountain National Park

The drive in through Big Thompson Canyon to get to Estes Park and RMNP is so twisty that I was getting motion sickness, and I was driving. We finally arrived in Estes Park, the gateway to RMNP, and could not believe how many people were there! But we made it all the way through town and into the park and made it to our campsite to begin our weeklong residency. We got there at about 1:00 and set up camp, and took a nap, and made dinner. After dinner, some of us built a campfire for s'mores, while Liz and Gabe went back to the visitor center where they had the best wifi so that he could do work for his online summer class. And he needed to go there because in Rocky we are dry camping. No water or electric or sewer or cell phone or internet. It's as it should be. But to get primitive is no easy task when you are accustomed to the modern world. So we got a solar panel, convertor, and all cables to charge the camper battery. And removed the camper's outside TV as a place to store it, and carted it all over the United States. Got a “solar shower”, which is basically a bag of water you hang in the sun until it's warm enough to use. Got a little solar phone charger. Got a 5 gallon water jug for drinking. Bought paper plates and disposable cups which we hate to do, but we have to conserve water. Charged the rechargable lantern.

And the lantern didn't stay charged. And the solar phone charger just doesn't work. And we never used the solar shower.

And the solar charging system... well, that seems to have had a short circuit in it. And very nearly burned down our camper. Luckily, I got it disconnected, and got the fire extinguisher, and got it unscrewed from the very thin, very dry wood it was attached to before flames appeared. Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrggghhhhhhhhh that will get the blood flowing.

But it was mounted in the storage compartment just below my bed. And if you've ever smelled fried electronic circuitry, then you know exactly what my bedroom smells like.

It was about an hour after the fact that I realized I could have just burned down Rocky Mountain National Park with my flaming camper.

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We woke up Monday morning, excited about visiting the park that we love but haven't seen in eight years. Parking lots fill up early – like, 7:00 am early – so we decided that we would just take the free hiker shuttle to our hike. Lucky for us, there is a short trail leading from the campground to the shuttle that is only 50 feet from our camper! But there are now SO MANY FREAKING PEOPLE in Rocky that it took us nearly two hours to get to our trailhead. And had to change buses at a waystation where we stood for so long in a line that snaked back and forth like the lines at DisneyWorld. Except that you are supposed to go out into nature to get away from other people.

We finally made it to the trailhead along with dozens and dozens of other people, to begin our hike to Loch Vale. And we hiked, single file, almost as though on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. Our hike had started at about 10,000 feet, and we climbed to about 11,000 feet over three miles. Some of us were handling this better than others, and we would often spread out, and then wait for everyone to catch up. When we were .8 miles from our destination, however, one of our party began to suffer the effects of... well, we're going to call it altitude sickness. We were forced to retreat to the trailhead, and we bravely continue on in the hope that we never see the people who were on that trail again.

We got back on the bus, and took another hour-long ride ride back to camp, where we promptly began discussions about moving on. I don't know about anybody else, but I am greatly disappointed. I have wanted to come back to this park, and to camp inside this park, for years. Congratulations to the NPS on raising their numbers. We need visitors to sustain the parks. But Yellowstone often feels crowded, and it had fewer visitors than Rocky did last year. And Yellowstone is nine times the size of RMNP.

After we got back to camp, I dropped Gabe off at the visitor center for wifi homework and headed into Estes Park to run a few errands and use their LTE signal to look for our next destination. The traffic was so bad that at one point, I drove past four storefronts in twenty minutes.

After dinner, our altitude sickness better in check, we drove the Trail Ridge Visitor Center, and climbed the 224 stairs (Izzie counted) to the nearby summit, which is at 12,005 feet. Would have been awesome if we had remembered to bring a camera. Seeing these spectacular views, and not sitting in traffic jams, really reminded me of why I came to love this park in the first place.

Pika

One final thought as we began drive down the hill...

We came upon a group of elk along the road, and Izzie, always the wildlife biologist, says in a loud voice "That elk is a boy!" And we all look over and together say "Yes, you can tell he's a boy because of his huge antl--OHMYGOD!!!!" And then she giggled. And giggled.

We decided to go to our old standby, the Black Hills of South Dakota. We were lucky enough to once again find campsites on our final call to our final option. But, once we cleared Big Thompson Canyon and had cell service, we discovered that an entire week of terrible weather was waiting in the Black Hills.

And so we all pulled over for a conference and phone calls to determine where we would go.

And so we headed east into Kansas. And while a number of things have gone wrong inside our camper, nothing has ever gone wrong outside of our camper. But yesterday, my mountain bike hopped off of the bike rack (it held on for dear life by clinging to the bike lock until a good samaritan flagged us down), and we had to stop for a sewer hose mishap, and... while preparing to exit to get fuel and while The Moose said that we still had 35 miles left in our tank... for the first time ever, we ran out of gas.

Did you know that if you are stupid enough to run out of gas on a Kansas highway, that $5 plastic gas can costs $30?

Luckily, Mom and Dad were a few miles behind us. They took the kids, and Liz unhooked Dad's Jeep from the RV to go for fuel. And I made a new friend, Trooper R.K. Thornburg, who was as kind and professional as he could have possibly been. Making sure we could get going and were emotionally sound (we thought the problem was mechanical and some of us may have been in a twit); helping keep passing cars off of us; and even helping to get the gas into the Moose. Couldn't have been better or nicer or kinder.

Today is Kathy's birthday, and we celebrated by driving through Kansas and Missouri. We are now in St. Louis for a few days of good old fashioning touristing as we head east.

See you soon!