Tuesday June 19th: Englewood, CO to Cheyenne, WY via Estes Park, CO and Rocky Mnt. Nat'l Park

After packing up and cleaning up in the morning we started towards Estes Park.  The traffic between Boulder and the turn off to Estes Park was terrible.  It was looking to be another extremely hot day so we were happy to be going to higher elevations.

Since we saw the first cactus plant in the Badlands Alex was fascinated with them.  At a small rest area and trailhead on our way to Estes Park we found some in full bloom right next to the trail where we could examine them up close.

This is the smoke from the High Park fire.  We had been seeing and smelling it for days from far away but this was the first closer view we had of it.  The news reports that morning had been optimistic, saying that lighter colored more white smoke meant the fire had burned up most of the fuel in the area and wasn't consuming new fuel.  As the day went on and winds continued we watched the smoke turn darker and darker though.

We decided that given our route and plans for the day it made more sense to eat our restaurant meal at lunch and do a picnic dinner instead.  So we explored town and had lunch before going into the park.

We stopped and hiked a little bit at the alluvial fan trail.

This is one of the few pictures I have from the next stretch.  I had wanted to do a loop through the park.  One of the areas listed as being best for kids was closed due to extensive construction and because we were staying north in Wyoming that night we didn't want to end up way far south in the park.  Looking at the maps the best loop appeared to me to take a seasonal one way route up the mountain that linked up to the main highway at the top.  On the way into the park I checked with the ranger about the condition of the one way road, it was gravel he said but in good condition and people with small cars regularly take it without issue.  It was gorgeous and not as scary as it could have been.  Ben however doesn't care for gravel roads in general and a one way gravel road on the side of a mountain was more nerve wracking than exciting for him.  We stopped a few places, one for this waterfall.  There were beautiful snow melt water falls coming down the mountain on the other side of the canyon from us but I couldn't drive and take pictures and the stopping places were few and far between.

Once we got above tree line things opened up more and there were more places to stop and places to hike a bit.  Then we met up with the paved highway which goes up a little higher yet (it tops off just over 12,000 feet).  We started seeing a lot more wildlife up there,  It was another hot day and there isn't very much snow this year so the animals seemed to have no reason not to stay at higher elevations.