Chapter 40 – Colorado East
June 18 to July 9,1999
6/19/99 Greetings from Denver. After a day of relaxing and shopping and puttering on fixit tasks yesterday, we went back to being tourists today. The Denver Art Museum is one of the better ones we've seen. The collections are extensive, and very well hung in expansive space. The relatively new building is very nice on the inside – but is postmodern factory design on the outside. It is seven stories tall – unusual for a museum. We particularly enjoyed a special exhibit from the Royal Academy – the "diploma works" from the members of the Royal Academy of Art during the Victorian period.
Right next to the Art Museum is the Public Library, a relatively new building with innovative architecture - for a library. We started on the top floor and worked our way down thru the central atrium hallways, which display about 20 paintings of western landscapes by Bierstadt, Moran, etc.
After the library, we walked the surrounding area for a while – an attractive block-square city park, impressive old city, state, and county office buildings, quaint old churches. Then we drove a short distance to Mile High Stadium and watched an MSL soccer game – the Colorado Rapids beat the Dallas Burn 2-1.
6/22 The Celestial Seasonings Tour of Tea, on Sleepytime Drive, was a walk thru the incoming pallets of 100 lb bags of herbs and teas imported from around the world, past the operating tea bag making and packing equipment, and a stop in the storeroom for mint. The mint was so powerful that it burned the eyes and Helen's throat tasted like mint for hours afterward. A wonderful collection of about 50 one-of-a-kind teapots, not for sale, is on display near the gift shop. These came from annual company sponsored art shows in which artists are asked to submit only tea pots. The company buys the show winners and a few others each year for this display. The showcases contained cute country-cottage teapots, Rube Goldberg teapots, sleek modern Japanese style teapots, and every style in between.
The Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art contains original artwork for the greeting cards sold by the company. The more than 200 or so paintings and sculptures are beautifully displayed. This is realistic representational art, not abstract modern stuff. The enormous Bill Hughes canvases "Down from the Mountain" and "Land of the Condor" are especially impressive.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and the Center for Renewable Energy nearer Denver are really just office and laboratory buildings with public access limited to displays in the spacious hallways. The displays are very elementary material, so we didn't learn much. One unusually nice exhibit at the NCAR was a hands-on tornado simulator. A gentle vertical flow of mist-filled air came up through the base of the exhibit, in a circular area perhaps 3 feet in diameter. Tiny air jets around the periphery were angled so as to initiate a slight circular motion. If left undisturbed, the air would gradually organize itself into a funnel cloud. Blowing gently into the area, or placing a hand near the air flow, would disturb or break up the organized flow. Dave found this fascinating, and so did a horde of other children of all ages. We expected these specialized research institutions to have more in-depth presentations than typically found in Natural History Museums and so were generally disappointed.
6/23 The Denver Botanic Garden, a national horticulture resource, is composed of more than 24 smaller gardens including a Japanese Garden, fragrance gardens, and several special collections including ones for roses, lilacs, peonies, iris and daylilies. The gardens, meticulously cared for by student interns, were pleasant to stroll through and a lot of people were there. The rosy dianthus were in spectacular full bloom and their perfume scented the air. Abundant water features cooled the air and reflected both statuary and city skyscrapers. I (Helen) generally don't favor modern art in botanic gardens, but Dave Rogers' "big bugs" enhanced the experience. His 8' ants and 6' beetles made of wood were striking points of interest in the vast lawns and shrubbery. We ended the day at the IMAX theatre in the Museum of Natural History, resting our feet through both Egypt and Alaska.
6/24 A drive up Lookout Mountain, west of Denver, brought us through the ponderosa pines to a County park, on a scenic hilltop, and within it, Boettcher Mansion, a well preserved and carefully restored building combining English Tudor and Arts and Crafts style of the 1920's, seemingly even part Medieval. The Great Hall had fieldstone walls, high timbered ceiling with gargoyles, a huge Inglenook fireplace, and large windows with sweeping views of the mountains. A few Stickley and Roycroft pieces of furniture were on display. We enjoyed the brief walk thru. This county park, and several others we drove past in the area, are part of an ongoing county "open space" initiative, funded by a 0.5% county sales tax.
Partly for this reason, the county, and particularly the area around the town of Evergreen, looked promising as a future homesite, if/when we stop travelling, so we drove through the area looking at the possibilities. Most of the homes had beautiful views, and the small town center still had real (as opposed to only tourist) businesses in it. The rolling foothills often offer views of snow-capped mountains just to the west and south, and simultaneously of the vast plains to the east. At this altitude, there are extensive forests of ponderosa pine – well spaced trees interspersed with natural wildflower-filled meadows. The area feels very rural. Much of it is zoned for homesites ranging from a few acres to 35 acres, so it will never be crowded. Yet central Denver is close enough to allow convenient shopping or culture trips (perhaps an hour's drive).
The road to 14,264' Mt Evans is advertised as the highest paved automobile route in the US. The parking lot at the end is at 14,130' with a trail to the top nearby. The long drive approaching the mountain on State Route 103 is through dense forest with not many views, but SR 5 up to the summit is above the timber line and the views out over the snowy peaks is as alpine as anyone could want. The stark rocky jumbles, melting snowpack, icy blue lakes, ever present clouds, and bighorn sheep and mountain goat herds made for an otherworldly experience.
6/25 Dave stayed to do minor maintenance at the trailer and Helen drove to Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak was visible from much of scenic I-25. The Fine Arts Center was holding a show and sale of local native art and so had removed their Georgia O'Keefe and Thomas Moran paintings from display - 'come back next week'.
The Pioneer Museum is in a building that is almost more interesting than the contents. Built as the county courthouse when the economy was flush with gold mining revenues, with 50 millionaires in the county at the turn of the century, it incorporated the highest quality materials and craftsmanship. Classical revival style with lavish use of rare colorful marbles, fountains, a wrought iron clock tower, decorated ceilings and fancy terrazzo floors, all carefully restored, and a knowledgeable welcoming staff make the building a delight be in. Visitors were even encouraged to use the Otis birdcage elevator. The eclectic collection, typical of a small museum, is well labeled and beautifully displayed. A walk through the large room of ladies lingerie from the antique clothing collection showed items of torture previously unknown to Helen. The Van Briggle Pottery room included an entire fireplace facade of a rich green tile that was especially appealing.
Garden of the Gods was a pleasant drive - a free city park with several miles of scenic roads and trails that wind thru huge hunks of red rock, which glowed in the setting sun.
6/27 An evening stop at Hudson Gardens in Littleton provided a pleasant stroll through extensive plantings along the South Platte River. The perennial gardens in lush bloom were well tended and nicely labeled. Despite good attendance at the grassy outdoor amphitheater for a Celtic concert, parking across the road was easy and convenient. The concert provided pleasant distant background music for our evening stroll.
When we arrived in the Denver area, we hadn't been aware just how large and spread-out the metropolitan area really is. By the time we left, we had driven the truck 811 miles in 11 days, just sightseeing around the area.
6/28 We moved our home up to Rocky Mountain National Park this morning. It's a short but scenic drive - a few miles up Interstate 25, then west along SR 66, then along US 36 to Estes Park. Only 55 miles total, but it's a transition into another world. We're at Mary's Lake Campground, a couple of miles from Estes Park at an elevation of 8100 feet. The campsites are terraced down a gentle hillside, giving every site a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains.
When we made the reservations, a few days ago, we were told that the July 4 weekend had been booked solid over a month ago, but that they could put us in an unserviced overflow site for those three days, and a full service site for the rest of the time, before and after that weekend. On the assumption that all the other nice places would also be full for that weekend, we accepted the need to move twice during our stay. A day after we arrived, we were told that they had a cancellation, and that we could stay in our site for the entire time. Sometimes serendipity is the best policy!
6/29 Rocky Mountain National Park has a huge number of hiking trails. We sampled one of these today – a delightful walk up a mountain canyon to Loch Vale. The first half mile is a wide, heavily traveled path to Alberta Falls, where Glacier Creek cascades down through a series of granite chutes, filling the air with mist and a continuous roar. It's a lovely, but crowded, spot. It's been a wet spring, and all the creeks are running strongly. The ponds are slightly over their banks, the trails are wet in places, and little rivulets are trickling down the mountainsides almost anyplace we look.
After Alberta Falls, the crowd thinned out somewhat and the trail continued up Glacier Creek, then branched up another canyon along Icy Brook, through Loch Vale and then up over a high moraine to The Loch, a sizeable lake trapped behind the moraine, which formed a natural dam when the last glacier retreated. The last 100 feet of trail before reaching the lake was still covered by a deep snowdrift, and much of the lakeshore was snow-covered. The remnants of two glaciers were visible on the mountainsides further up the canyon.
This isn't far from the timberline, but the trees (fir, pine, spruce) are still large and healthy in this fairly protected valley. We started hiking at 9200 feet elevation, and the lake is at 10,200 feet. Total round trip distance was about 5.4 miles. The trail continues past the lake – branching to Andrews Glacier or to Sky Pond. But the snow drifts were increasingly frequent and we weren't equipped for extensive snow scrambling. As I sat quietly, on a rocky bluff overlooking the lake, eating lunch and enjoying the scenery, an aggressive Clark's Nutcracker and a ground squirrel seemed determined to share my lunch.
Dave extended the hike a bit by bushwhacking up a sunny south-facing mountainside. On the way back, Helen was enjoying the scenery so much that she took another trail branch up to Mills Lake, extending her hike by another mile (and also a substantial additional amount of climbing).
We're coming into peak tourist season. There was no parking available at any of the trailheads in this canyon. We had to drive back out to Glacier Basin to a large parking area, then take a shuttle bus up the canyon to our trailhead. Yet had we come a couple of weeks earlier in the season, most of the trails and some of the roads would have been closed by snow. We like the rushing water of early summer, but may have to agree with those who say that September and October are the best time to visit this park.
6/30 Today, we drove US 34 (Trail Ridge Road) all the way across the National Park. This is the high point of a park visit in more ways than one, offering a panoramic view of the most spectacular scenery in the park, and topping out at an elevation of 12,183 feet. We particularly enjoyed the overlooks along the canyon of the Big Thompson River. Here, the highway runs for miles along the crest of a narrow 12,000-foot-high ridge, with one side dropping steeply to the river, 2000 feet below. This canyon follows a geological fault through the mountains – a perfectly straight cut which looks very odd among the randomness of the rest of the landscape.
On the west side of the park, the highway drops steeply to the Colorado River, then turns south, following the river. This is near the headwaters, and the mighty Colorado is just a meandering little stream. A few miles south, we came to a series of three large lakes, all but one artificial, where the river has been dammed. Soon after this, the road climbs out of this canyon, and winds its way through the mountains south and east, eventually joining Interstate 70. After only a few miles on the Interstate, we turned north again on SR 119, passing through Central City – a decrepit old mining town which is remaking itself into a major summer resort, with several large gambling casinos under construction among the cliffs, and a heavily advertised summer opera program in progress. Continuing north, we eventually found ourselves on SR 7, which led us back into the park to our campground – a 185-mile round trip, much of it along small scenic, slow, roads.
7/2 Drove along the road to Bear Lake, stopping to spend some additional time at the Moraine Visitors Center/Museum, in an attractive log building built in the 1920's. We walked an interesting half-mile nature trail behind the museum, finding many of the flowers, trees, and shrubs labeled. Bear Lake is a bit of a disappointment. Its main advantage is that it is one of the most easily accessible subalpine lakes. But it isn't nearly as pretty as Loch or Mills Lakes, to which we had hiked a few days ago, nor for that matter, not nearly as scenic as Lake Louise in Banff National Park, with which it is sometimes compared. On the way back, we had a little time left before dark and stopped at the Bierstadt Lake trailhead. We had no information about this trail, but it didn't look too long on the map, so we set off to find the lake. What we couldn't tell from the map is that the trail goes up and over a very steep and high moraine on the way to the lake. We went up and up, cutting back and forth along uncountable switchbacks, sometimes in forest, often on open hillside, watching the sun slowly set, before we finally came over the top of the ridge and started down a gentle slope into a shallow hanging valley on the other side. Bierstadt Lake is quite unlike the others I mentioned above. It is at equally high altitude, but is in a gentle, heavily forested, valley, with no rocks and the forest coming right down to the water. The edge of the water also slopes gently, so that the lake shore is hidden by a fringe of reeds and cattails. In the red light of the sun as it disappeared behind the low mountains to the west, this little lake was an attractive and peaceful forest scene – a lovely contrast to the other lakes.
7/4 Helen stayed home while Dave drove to the Long's Peak trailhead, and took the trail up Estes Cone – a moderately challenging hike of about 6.5 miles round trip and 1600 feet elevation gain to the summit. The first 2/3 of the hike is a pleasant and relatively gentle climb through a pine forest. The trail passes by the ruins of an old mine (well picked over – not much of interest), and then through Moore Park, a meadow in the forest, the lower portion of which is quite damp. I saw a dense growth of marsh marigolds and iris in this area, with the fringes of the damp area crowded with blue spruce trees.
The final mile of the hike goes almost straight up the cone – very steep and rocky, although still in a sparse forest of limber pine until near the top. The mountain stands by itself, and its tapered cone shape gives a panoramic vista from the narrow rocky summit. I was just high enough to see the distant plains through gaps in the mountains to the east. To the west, the dramatic cliffs of the west face of Long's Peak dominates the view. To the north, Estes Lake and a portion of Estes Park were visible. The wind was blowing fiercely. Standing on the exposed rocky top, it was difficult to maintain my balance as violent gusts came up over the cliffs on the western face of the summit. This isn't one of the highest peaks in the area, but it certainly offers one of the best views.
7/6 Thunder, as we prepared for an afternoon drive, made us question how much of the mountain scenery we would really be able to see, but we set off anyway for Sprague Lake. The easy .5-mile loop around this shallow lake surprised us because the lake was mirror calm, reflecting the roiling dark clouds on the nearest peaks perfectly – an unusual sight.
Lily Lake has another level short hike, and as Dave talked to the construction crew in the parking lot, Helen hiked around the .5-mi loop. The north shore had the largest collection of wildflowers seen so far – over 30 different varieties, not counting the grasses, reeds, and sedges. Helen was pleased to be able to name all but one.
7/7 A delightful afternoon drive. We started on US 34, up the Fall River northwest out of Estes Park. A few miles past the park entrance, we came to a raw-looking alluvial fan, deposited when a dam failed in 1982 at Lawn Lake, high up in the mountains. A wall of water roared down the canyon – pushing house-sized boulders ahead of it, and moving huge quantities of gravel and smaller rocks down to the Fall River valley. Only three people were killed – campers who couldn't get out of the way in time. The alluvial fan covered the floor of the valley, so that the Fall River was dammed, forming a 17-acre lake. Flooding occurred far downstream in Estes Park. The lake is still there, although shrinking as the river slowly carves down through the dam. The fan, viewed from a distance, is still a raw-looking scar. Up close, it is very interesting to see the regeneration process. Fir, pine, and spruce trees have sprouted sparsely, and are now about 3 feet high. A few small shrubs have appeared among the rocks, and occasional other plants are visible. But much of the surface is still bare rock and gravel.
We turned off US 34 and continued west along Old Fall River Road. This was the original road up to the Alpine Visitor's Center, on the Continental Divide. It is narrow, gravel, and one-way (westbound), twisting its way along the side of a 10-mile long valley. Along the way, there are many interesting views of the snow-dotted mountains across the valley, and occasionally a long view back down the valley to Estes Park.
Part way up the road, we were startled to hear a siren rapidly approaching behind us. Just as we found a pull-out and got out of the one-way track, a Park Ranger screamed past us in a huge cloud of dust. A couple of miles further along the road, we were stopped in a traffic jam of spectators. We never found out exactly what was happening, but it appeared that a group of climbers among the snowdrifts high on the opposite slope had some sort of accident and that a rescue would be mounted. We eventually got past this area and continued on up the mountain. Apparently, they closed the road just after we passed, so that we were able to poke along slowly, all by ourselves. Just below the continental divide and just above the timberline, the narrow valley opens out into a huge cirque. The upper slopes still have deep snowdrifts, and many little streams cascade down the slopes, joining in the middle to form the Fall River. We found a pullout here and spent a long time enjoying the views and wandering through the tundra looking at wildflowers and other strange alpine plants. Most plants hug the ground – some forming dense mounds a foot across and less than an inch high (including the flower stalks). We saw a large sunflower, called "Old Man of the Mountain" – with flowers up to 3" across, held on short stalks which barely keep the flowers above the ground.
At the Alpine Visitor's Center, we stopped and hiked about .3 mile up a trail to a high overlook. This spot has very long views in all directions, and really feels like the top of the world. As we reached the top, we were met by a herd of Elk, grazing about 100 feet from the trail. All seemed to be relatively young males with sizeable antlers, except for two who were older, with huge racks. At the very end of the trail, just beyond a rail fence, a fat marmot perched on a big rock, posing for the tourists. This interesting animal is a close relative of the eastern woodchuck, somewhat smaller, but equally slow-moving and unafraid of humans.
The drive home was back down Trail Ridge Road (US 34). We had driven up this road a few days ago, but driving it downhill gives a whole new set of views and it felt like a different road.
7/9 Another day, three more lakes. We hiked a steep trail from the Bear Lake parking area up to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake. The round trip was a little under four miles, but the altitude gain ensured that we got back with the feeling that we'd done a day's work. The trail itself is one of the more scenic in the park. It frequently climbs over bare granite outcroppings, which provide long views back down the valley. A stream, still swollen with snowmelt, cascades down alongside the trail, with several attractive waterfalls along the way. Emerald Lake, the last and highest of this chain of lakes, is tucked right up against the sheer cliffs of Hallet Mountain and Flattop Peak, which are part of the Continental Divide It gets my vote for the most scenic lake in the Park, approaching (but not equaling) Consolation Lake in Banff for scenic beauty. Just visible in the canyon between Hallet and Flattop Peaks is Tyndall Glacier (not really much of a glacier, but what can you expect this far south?) Many little streams cascade down the cliffs from the snowfields above. Towering cumulous clouds form above the peaks.
This lovely place makes a fitting end for our stay at Rocky Mountain National Park. Tomorrow, we'll head northeast, across the corners of Wyoming and Nebraska on the "blue routes" and then zigzagging through some of the National Parks and Monuments in North and South Dakota and the eastern edge of Wyoming.