Rocky Mountain Nat'l. Park - final fling before school starts

True to form, we decided very last minute to take a little road trip.  Of course we needed to do one last one before I head back to school.  We decided on Rocky Mountain National Park.  It has been on our bucket list for quite a while.  We were not disappointed.  It is Colorado in all its' high mountain glory! We took off Thursday afternoon and made it to within about 75 miles of the park finding our camp spot just before dark.  It was just past State Bridge, Colorado.  We made it to the park in the morning and spent the day driving all but one section of road in the park.  We even did the 9-mile Old Fall River Road which is dirt, but well maintained.  When we had just a couple of miles to go on it a hail storm hit - the beginning of the afternoon thunderstorms of this time of year.  It got clear down to 32 degrees and hailed, sleeted and rained pretty hard for a while and then it was over and the sun came out again.   After our day in the park we drove through a whole bunch of other amazingly scenic roads on the way back down.  We spent a lot of time enjoying scenery and then hit some road construction that slowed us up. It got too dark to find another camp spot, so we opted for a motel in Fairplay, Colorado. The next day we continued our journey taking the long route so as to hit Wolf Creek Pass, Durango, Silverton and Ouray (lots of old favorites) on the way home.  We enjoyed it all made it home just after midnight. We got every minute's worth of good out of our time, and put on about 1600 miles in the process.  Happy final fling!

FYI - The highest major highway in North America tops out at 12,183 feet in the park.  Nearly one third of the park is above treeline which is 11,400 feet in the park.  The park holds 72 named peaks above 12,000 feet and Longs Peak, at 14,259 feet, is the northernmost "fourteener" peak in the Rocky Mountain chain.  

Amazing vistas in the park - stone masons at work are amazing!  

Didn't have time to do much hiking, but the rain stopped and we really wanted to get up close to this beautiful waterfall.

Did the short hike around Bear Lake. Didn't see the bear they warned us about.

Had to take a picture of Lily Mountain - even in the pouring rain! It was just sprinkling at Lily Lake.

Window shots along the way to the old favorites.

Molas Pass 

Bear Creek Falls

Cool buildings - all but one in Silverton.

Took these out the window along Hwy. 70 on the way there and on the way home.
Grand Staircase-Escalante.