Day 14 Winter Park to Boulder CO

3000 miles on the clock and all going well.  

Here's the place we stayed last night - it's a ski resort at Winter Park, Colorado, offering super-low pricing to fill beds at the end of the ski season.  JLunny - it was a bit like 'Hotel Californina' in Tonga - I think we were about the only people in the hotel.    Note the ski lift is right outside the front door.

Here's one of the larger resort complexes at Winter Park.  All of the rooms here are privately-owned.  Winter Park has dozens of ski runs - you can see one behind the photo here.

Today the plan was to drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park to Estes Park, high up in the Rockies.  So off we went, stopping off at this little lake just down the road from our hotel.

 Before we got back in the car, we had to stop by to say "hi" to Smokey the Bear.

The Amtrak steams through these parts - here it is picking up some more passengers as it travels west.

As we approached the National Park, clouds were developing nicely over the higher ground. These eventually developed into thunderstorms - it was something else hearing the thunder echo around the valleys and hills of the Rockies.
 

We passed a few more lakes on the way into the Park.  Here's Lake Granby.

 Access to the National Park is free this week, so we saved ourselves USD10.  We had a chat with the local Ranger and discovered the road we wanted to take to Estes Park was still closed for the winter.  That threw a spanner in the works, resulting in a bit of a change to our plans.

Interestingly, there were signs up at the National Park HQ describing what to do if we confronted a Mountain Lion.  The last resort was to fight it!  In addition, meetings with Black Bears and Moose were possible.  So we decided to head out on a walk to see what we could find.  We didn't stumble onto any lions, bears or moose - but we did see a squirrel and a marmot.  And a couple of birds. 

Saw some nice mountain flowers too.

 

 This is the view from the National Park, looking back down the valley.

Cool cloud formations as the thunderstorms developed...

One of the walks we took crossed the Colorado River.  The source of the Colorado is ten miles up the track, so it's just a pup here.

This is typical of the views around here...

We drove up to the Continental Divide, where the road was closed.  Here, at over 11,000ft a shower cloud passed over and it snowed.  It got pretty cold, pretty quickly so we turned around and head back down into the valley.

 Our detour took us east-ward into the eastern Rockies.  Benson (our GPS) insisted on a particular route to our next destination.  Up until this time, Benson had behaved relatively well, so we took his advice.  Bad call.  His choice was a long single-lane shingle road, with impressive gradients, past lots of very old gold mines and some old buildings and huts.  Like this one...

Our dirt-track diversion ultimately led us to a very unusual town called Central City.  This place was established in the late 1850s and has around 500 inhabitants.

Here's the main cobbled-stoned street.

It's a pretty little town but it has far too many casinos for its own good.

We decided to make tracks for Boulder and rest up for the night. 

Here's the view of the gateway to Boulder, Colorado.  They're the Rockies in the background.

As we got into Boulder, we noticed a military helicopter hovering about a block away from us.  We also noticed the "smokies" were out in force and a few roads were blocked; some with people waving placards.  We later discovered that President Obama is in town.

The motel we're staying in had a blues night with several local bands playing in its restaurant - good to have live music during dinner tonight.  James C - we discovered a great local wheat beer: Odell Easy Street, brewed in Denver.  Best we've had in the US to date.

We've got a long drive to Dodge City, Kansas tomorrow.  Tune in tomorrow to see how it eventuated.

Cheers

PF