We left Devil's Tower on a hot sunny day and headed South through Wyoming. It is very dry and dusty and filled with oil and gas wells as far as the eye can see.
Our destination was Douglas, a small town servicing the oil and gas industry. Just out of town there is a lovely natural bridge crossing a creek called Ayres Bridge, where the locals come to picnic and swim.
We passed by old Wild West Towns like Laramie and Cheyenne nestled into the foothills of the Rockies which were quickly looming up ahead of us. At Loveland we stopped going down Interstate-25 along the edge of the Rockies and turned sharply right and drove into an almost invisible Canyon that was barely 50m wide. We followed the canyon with its small roaring stream slowly uphill, with each corner providing an even more remarkable view. Then suddenly we entered a basin in the mountains surrounded by high peaks. We had arrived at Estes Park, the gateway to the Northern part of the Rockies and the fabulous Rocky Mountains National Park. We had a lovely campsite with mountains all around. We even had Elk grazing on the roadsides.
There was lots to see and do in the RMNP and there were hordes doing it as well. The first day we drove over the Rockies along the Trail Ridge Rd which crosses the mountains at 12200 feet. The views as you can imagine are formidable. There was almost no snow on the Rockies. They were rugged and well rocky. Not as high as we had thought because they rise from a 5000 ft plain. There are 55 peaks over 14000 ft in Colorado. The nearest one to Estes Park is Longs Peak. But truly one of the great places of the world.
On the second day we went for an early morning walk around Bear Lake. At the foot of a glacier, the water is clear and in the early morning light looked tranquil and serene.
After a five lovely days at Estes Park, we drove down south to the Denver area and stayed at the Golden Gate Canyon State Park which at 9200 ft was a very high campground. We were not far from old abandoned gold mining towns like Black Hawk and Central City which when we visited we were most disappointed as they had been turned into gambling dens with the ostensible aim of raising money to preserve them. Preserve them HA HA!
Then more travelling through the Rockies following narrow canyons again, passing through the Eisenhower Tunnel burrowing through the Rockies at 11000 ft until we crossed over into a big valley in the middle of the Rockies where the Arkansas River begins. We camped near Buena Vista and drove up into the mountains following another narrow creek for magnificent views of Mt Princeton.
The road ended at the old ghost town of St Elmo, formerly housing 2000 people at the height of the gold rush.
On the way back we stopped by a cascading water fall and ate our lunch to the sound of the rushing water.
From Buena Vista we head to Colorado Springs where we will see first hand the ravages of the terrible forest fires that swept through there very recently.
