Monday, May 22, 2023
Day 5 on the road.
Up early and worked for a bit before climbing back into the truck and driving to the Rocky Mountain National Park. The view of all the snow-capped mountains surrounding us no matter where we were was as awe inspiring as I had always imagined.
We ended up driving up the top of one of the mountains but was stopped just shy of the top due to the weather. Snow! But we were able to park and take some photos of the surrounding landscape and just breathe in nature.
On the way up the mountain, we passed and had to go around a massive pileup of cars some of which where blocking the roadway – Dave looked as I drove around them all and said he thought he saw a Moose. On our way back down the crowd was gone except for 1 car so I pulled over and walked over to the boardwalk where everyone had been gathered earlier. Dave was weak and didn’t get out with me so I walked quickly down the boardwalk and by golly there was a Moose! I got a couple of pictures of him I think so will try to upload those later. I went back to the truck and started back down the mountain just as a bunch more cars started parking – so got out of there in the nick of time. Lol
We saw lots of Elk as we were traveling around the park, as well as some Mule Deer and Dall Sheep. I did find a marmot (which looks like Ohio’s chipmunk without the stripe) and a beautiful purple (my fav color) flower which our daughter-in-law identified as Pasque. I also saw a large bird, about the size of a crow, that was black with white wings and tail. Kind of reminded me of like a Magpie but haven’t pulled the pictures up to ID it yet.
As we started back to the campground, our road was closed due to a bad accident so they detoured us on another route which we were not expecting but totally loved the view – so different as we were driving down in between mountain walls instead of roads where the mountains were overshadowing the path. Prayers for those involved in the accident and the first responders, but would never have seen that if we hadn’t been detoured.