Rocky Mountain NP

In preparation for the proposed ride to Grand Lake, hubby and I decided that if the weather conditions were snowy or rainy or snow on the ground we wouldn't go. The cold would be ok as we have the right gear to keep us warm and safe. We got up to check the CDOT road conditions to make the final yay or nay call. The conditions for Berthoud Pass were wet and icy. And as we sat there looking at it the page refreshed to wet, icy and snow pack. That definitely called it for us. No ride to Grand Lake. :-(

So, we then decided to do an alternate trip. The conditions through Boulder to Estes Park were really good. In fact the metro area was supposed to be sunny and upper 70s all day. I always like traveling to Estes Park, much more than hubby, but he liked the idea so we prepped for the ride.

We decided to ride to Boulder and have breakfast there. It was quite windy, the windiest I'd been in on the bike for sure. The wind certainly does wear you out quickly. We'd only ridden about 25 miles to get to breakfast and we were tired already. But, breakfast perked us up. Hubby got some coffee in his system and I had grits and egg and ham. (We don't find grits very often in this part of the world.)

From there we thought we'd head to Lyons where we'd hop on highway 7 and take the back way into Estes. Highway 7 is part of the Peak to Peak Highway and very scenic. I hadn't been that way in a long time and never on the bike. Very fun. We will definitely do that again. Here is a photo taken at a scenic pullout near Allenspark.


Coming into Estes the back way allowed us to miss much of the traffic. We stopped to get gas before going into Rocky Mountain National Park. There were 4 open entrance stations and the lines were pretty long. When we stopped for gas I remembered to move my wallet to my jacket pocket so we could pay the entrance fee. $10 per bike, good for 7 days. And he told us he put us both on one ticket so if we wanted to come back in a car, the pass would still be good. That was cool.

I'd been leading the way this trip so I decided to head up Trail Ridge Road. It had been closed over night due to the snow so I knew we wouldn't get very far but I thought it would be nice to take the bikes up as far as we could. Holy smokes it was so crowded up there! There were cars strewn about the road where the gate was closed. I was very glad we were on the bikes because I thought we were going to have to split some parked cars to get out of the lot. So, we turned right around and headed back down the road. On the way down we found an empty pull out where we stopped to rest and take a couple of pictures.


We rode around just a bit more until we got hungry and tired of fighting the traffic. When we came out of the Fall River gate, there were cars lined up beyond the visitor's center waiting to get in. Yikes. Turns out it was Elk Fest that weekend. Guess we should have checked the calendar. We had some lunch and headed home. This time we went home the usual route on highway 36.

At the end of the day we'd traveled about 170 miles - a new long distance record for us! Yay! :-)