{"id":1444,"date":"2020-06-13T22:24:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-14T03:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2020-06-13T22:24:04","modified_gmt":"2020-06-14T03:24:04","slug":"2020-road-trip-journal-rocky-mountain-national-park-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/13\/2020-road-trip-journal-rocky-mountain-national-park-1\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 Road Trip Journal: Rocky Mountain National Park 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day Four: June 13<\/h4>\n

Today did not go as planned, although it managed a partial recovery by the end.<\/p>\n

The drive from Colorado Springs to Estes Park was comparatively short, for a “drive day.” I expected to arrive by noon and go straight into the park for a half-day before checking in at the lodge where I’m staying. I’ve been to Rocky Mountain National Park before (I was here on my 2015 epic road trip, and again on a one-park trip a couple of years later) so I wasn’t planning to spend a lot of time seeing the whole place. A quick run around the major points today, and then day hikes the next two.<\/p>\n

I got to Estes Park at noon as expected… but there I found a chunk of the highway that leads into the park closed for construction, requiring a traffic-jammed detour right through the town’s Main Street; I noticed the sidewalks were positively jammed with people (all wearing masks, but still), and finally I learned that RMNP is controlling the numbers of people who enter by requiring reservations, which you have to make online. They weren’t doing this when I checked a few days before my trip began, it must be a new decision. I’ll have to keep an eye on the upcoming parks on my trip, so I don’t get caught out again.<\/p>\n

Worried that I’d be unable to visit the park at all\u2014 who knows how soon the available spots book up?\u2014 I grabbed my phone and went to the online system: fortunately they weren’t all booked up for today, but the earliest I could get into the park would be 3:00.<\/p>\n

So I went to the lodge first and checked in. Fortunately, though I was three hours early for the listed check-in time, my room was ready and they were happy to let me go ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stayed at this same place the last time I was here. At right, this is what’s right outside my room’s back door. Now you know why I’m back. It’s called Aspen Winds if you’re every looking for a place on a trip of your own, and it’s a family business.<\/td>\n\"View<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

So things were at least partly looking up. I went back online to get entry times for the rest of my stay here, and I won’t be able to get into the park tomorrow until 2:00. Really too late to start on a planned all-day hike, not to mention that I have no idea what I’ll do with myself tomorrow until then. I got better news for Monday, I got an 8:00AM entry, and another 8:00AM for Tuesday (I’ll be traveling on Tuesday, but my route leads through<\/em> the park, so I needed that morning entry! It would be a massive detour to go around it, on a drive that will already be one of the longest ones of the trip.)<\/p>\n

That leaves me with two half-days and only one full day. I’ll have to decide what hike I want to do that one day. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to make the best of my two half-days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nEvery cloud has a silver lining, they say, and here’s one. I entered the park at 3:00 per my reservation, and there was a moose grazing in the meadow near the entrance. Moose are not common in this park, so it was a real bonus.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
I then drove over to the Alluvial Fan area: a favorite spot of mine in this park. I told the story of the flood that created it in my 2015 Road Trip reports, no need to repeat: you can read it here.<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Thunderstorms were rolling in as I returned to my car; when the storm broke I parked and waited out the rain, which passed in a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nPetrichor (n): the smell of earth after a rain.<\/em>
\nThat’s a word I first heard in an episode of Doctor Who, and I thought at the time the writer had made it up, just a bit of the Doctor’s technobabble. But it’s a real word, and if ever I wanted to know what it was like, I learned when I got out of my car at Upper Beaver Meadow just as the rain finished. The air was positively drenched in it, it was really wonderful. Cameras need a scent attachment.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I next drove over to Bear Lake, stopping to look at this and that along the way. Here are some more pictures, without specific comment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nSo that’s today’s adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll… well, figure out how to fill up the time until 2:00, and then see what I can do with a second half-day in the park.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Trip Report:<\/h4>\n

Miles driven today: <\/strong>187.2
\nTotal miles so far: <\/strong>972.9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day Four: June 13 Today did not go as planned, although it managed a partial recovery by the end. The drive from Colorado Springs to Estes Park was comparatively short, for a “drive day.” I expected to arrive by noon…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"2020 Road Trip Journal: Rocky Mountain National Park 1","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Mountains.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BJaJ-ni","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}