Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Loveland, CO, was our home base for a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. Loveland is another town that looks like the economy has been bad for a while--a lot of downtown stores were closed up, and an outlet mall area is half-deserted. The campground was convenient & quiet, an okay place that would probably have been a lot nicer if it hadn't been rainy almost the whole time. A lot of the campsites were occupied by insurance adjusters and contractors, in the area to work in the aftermath of the tornado that wiped out Windsor, CO a couple of weeks back.


Once again, I was in geology heaven when we drove over to Estes Park to see the national park.



We drove in the car, leaving the motorhome in Loveland because we just didn't know if we would enjoy the canyon drive--and we didn't even know what the canyon was like. Jim was still struggling to get a good satisfying breath due to the altitude, coupled with unusually high humidity for this part of the country.

Estes Park is a cool tourism town. It's full of little shops selling tourist clutter, art, and outdoor gear. Lots of restaurants too of course. We both could imagine spending a summer there, with the national park as playground! But as it turned out, we both got really dizzy with the altitude when we started to drive around inside the park. The only cure for altitude sickness is getting to a lower altitude, so sadly we drove back out. Next trip, we'll acclimate for a long time before hitting the high country. On a good note, as we drove into Big Thompson Canyon on our route to Estes Park, the sun finally shone for us!