Boarded Southwest Airlines for a flight to Denver, then on to Estes Park, Colorado for 10 days of Rocky Mountain weather. We rented a lovely home in Windcliff Estates, called The Griffin!
We celebrated Dale’s birthday during our stay!
Our rental was 4 bedrooms, 3 baths with a amazing kitchen and a huge fireplace with huge picture windows and a large outside deck. Little did we realize that a mountain top home meant a hairy, 8 switchback, 2 lane paved road! After unloading the car we headed to Safeway for groceries for our stay!
During our stay we hiked Lily Lake, Sprague Lake, Lymph Lake, Bear Lake, Poudre Lake, and a trail on the tundra!
Our house backed up to RMNP and we hiked a trail into it, plus we usually walked a mile in the neighborhood......all uphill and downhill. We drove Trail Ridge Road before the smoke from the Cameron Peak fire shut it down.
The Cameron Peak fire displayed quite a smoke plume up to 35,000 feet as it burned! We also walked along the river trail in town after lunch one day.
The highlight of our trip was a trip we booked with Backbone Adventures! We rented a Polaris Razor 4 place for a day of off-roading!
It was a wild day...up and over boulders or straddling gullies in the Rocky Mountain National Forrest! Armed with a map and GPS navigation we took on most of the trails! Dale spotted a huge rock for a perfect picnic lunch spot about Noon. We left that day coated with Rocky Mountain dirt!
The big unexpected surprise of our trip was a snowstorm with 6-8 inches of powder. Being from South Texas we don’t see snow much!
Dale was in charge of snow removal!
I loved going out for a walk with my camera to take some photos of the Winter Wonderland in September. At night the temps were in the 20’s, but made it just above freezing during the day. Concerned about driving back to Denver in a snowstorm, we stayed one extra day. Lucky for us we were able to stay in our rental, changed our flight and added a day to our rental car. The drive back went off without a hitch, the roads were clear and traffic wasn’t bad!
RMNP has awesome landscapes, herds of elk, and pristine lakes!
Of course the altitude was a killer for us Texans! A hike to Lymph Lake at almost 10,000 feet, just about did us in...but a rest stop with a candy bar and water gave us the energy to continue to Lymph Lake!
Our rental home was perfect, and the snowstorm, a bonus made it look like a winter wonderland outside!
