Rock Mountain National Park

Friday, we decided to take a much needed break from looking at houses. We took a drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here we approaching Estes Park, a little resort town at the "base" of the park. It sits at about 8,000 ft.








This will probably be the extent of the fall colors we will experience this year. Fall is by far our favorite time of year and the BEST time of year in Michigan. It's one of the things we will most about our previous home state.










The mating season is in full swing and elk viewing and photo opportunities where abundant!














Here are our elevation stats at the top of the park. Well, not actually the top because we went around another bend and actually made it to 12,150 ft!

For reference, our base camp in Denver is at 5,335 ft and it was 79 degrees an hour before our arrival at the summit. Yes, we did catch some snow at the top. However, we didn't stick around to enjoy it, the wind was blowing around 50mph which made it hard to stand in one place and it felt like any exposed skin was being sand blasted by the snow!

This is an interesting picture because it clearly shows three distinct zones. I didn't take the time to research the names of the zones, sorry :)

The trees stop growing at about 10,000 ft. The top zone starts at 12,000 and the peak you are looking at tops out around 14,500. There's not a lot happening in the zone in the middle. So, our non-scientific terms are the tree zone, the dead zone and the polar zone :)





It's still hard for us to imagine that we are going to be living just about an hour from all of this ;)

-Rich & Laura-