RMNP and Family Visits

We traveled back to Rocky Mountain National Park for the third time on Monday. Spent the day wandering around getting the scenes and views imprinted on our brain. We were so lucky - Monday was considered the peak of the aspens changing color - this is something I have wanted to see for so many years, the aspens in their height of golds. What an amazing thing to see. I encourage any and all, if you haven't seen these trees in their gold color, you must put it on your list of things to do. Absolutely stunning. Every where you turned - golds, smell of pines, clear blue sky, animals. Another of the things we wanted to do was hike the Milner Pass trail which goes up and over the Continental Divide. We climbed from 9400 feet in altitude to over 12,500 by the time we decided that if we didn't turn around and come back down, we would not be able to function for the rest of the day. Again, breath-taking views. We were higher than the snow packs! A Stellar Jay bird was quite upset with us as we hiked along, we got too close to her nest and she came within 5 feet of us, squawking and saying to go away. We figured we hiked about 3 miles that day - but the first mile and half was almost straight up. I am surprised we did so well but we knew that drinking water, resting, eating snacks would help which it did. We didn't get mountain sickness like the other day. We stopped in Estes Park on the way back and had a fabulous dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We will never forget our time here.

Yesterday we drove into Littleton which is a suburb south of Denver, to niece and nephew's house (Caryn and Scott) - our mail had finally arrived after 16 days of being in la-la land lost. Darn Post Office - we lost all faith in them and will not use the PO for much anymore. We since opened up a FedEx account so we can ship to and from home. The time spent with Caryn went too fast. This morning we drove into Fort Collins and met up with with Emily (Caryn and Scott's daughter) and Cody and Imana for a couple of hours. Just adorable kids. Tomorrow morning we move south to New Mexico and will be staying in Santa Rosa, about one and half hours east of Albuquerque for a month. I will be going to Phoenix to help with the grand kids during this month, so blog entries will be scant. Sad to say good-bye here, we had such a lovely time.