Another day, another day trip. Today we are going to take a trip over to Grand Lake. Once again we find ourselves taking the Trail Ridge Road up to the Alpine Visitors Center and down the other side toward Grand Lake. The Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved road in the United States.When we departed Estes Park it was a lovely clear day. However as the sighs say along the way...the weather is subject to change at any time, and change it did!! As we ascended the mountain the temperature began to drop and the sky turned dark. As we neared the 12,000 foot level the temperature had gone from 85 degrees to about 50 degrees and as you can see from the top photo, the rains had begun. By the time we had begun our travel down to Grand Lake, the temperature dipped to a low of 44 degrees. With thunder and lighting around us it was an
impressive sight!
As we travelled
down towards the Village of Grand Lake, we went through Milner Pass, which is the continental divide where the mountain summits divide the flow of water wither to the east or to the west.As we continued on we found some moose grazing in the meadow. They are huge animals and can be very dangerous. It seems that more people are killed by moose each year than from bears.
The village of Grand Lake is surrounded by Shadow Mountain, Grand Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park and the Arapaho National Recreation Area. This small western type town has some interesting shops and we were told is as vibrant in the winter as in the summer. Just as we got out to walk around the rains came again, this time with some hail that was about pea size. We ran into a shop to get out of the weather and bought some jerky, elk. It was very good as they were handing out samples.
At the rain did not look like it was going to stop soon we headed back up to mountain and back to Estes Park.
That is all for today.
Miss you all,
Candy and Johnny
