After an all too brief nap at the oh so luxurious Days Inn of Silverthorne (4 hours is too few to call an actual night’s sleep) I was off to Rocky Mountain National Park. I was in a bit of a mood already for the day thinking that I was about 15 minutes behind schedule and after arriving at the hotel a good three hours late I was getting tired of being behind. This is how I inadvertently watched the sunrise. You see, I wasn’t three hours late to my hotel. I was two hours late. It was just that some jokester had decided to set the clock in my room ahead an extra hour. It is unfair to mess with the clocks in hotels. Either a guest is tired when checking in and will wearily just accept it and dock themselves the time to sleep OR a guest is there for a little illicit behavior and will rush. Either way it is definitely unsportsmanlike behavior.
How did I find out what time it actually was? Not from the radio – I was listening to a little historical chick lit book on tape with some bodice ripping undertones. From my phone? Nope – set to manual reset, no instant updates for me. Luddite. I found out the good old fashioned way. While standing outside the Visitor Center shooting dagger looks at the staff inside who had failed to open the center on time (by my watch) a volunteer finally came over and set me on the right path. At this point I decided to accept the loss of an hour of sleep time and look at it as an added half hour of cushion time to eat breakfast and read the guidebook entry on the park. “Wait, that math doesn’t quite…oh, you were waiting outside the visitor center for an half hour before someone filled you in…” Yup.
The park is gorgeous and has a few special points of interest to National Park trivia dorks. Or American road trip dorks. 1) It has the highest continuous paved highway in the US (or possibly the world) running through its alpine tundra section. Over 12,000 feet up. 2) One of its visitor centers (there are 5 or so in the park) is the highest one in the National Park system. It is called The Island in the Clouds and it bests the House of the Sun (at Haleakala) by over a 1,000 feet. 3) The water pipes at Island in the Clouds freeze over during winter. Which lasts apparently until July as the pipes were still frozen yesterday necessitating use of drafty backwoods outhouse style toilet across the parking lot.
The park is really beautiful and it was fun to trek across the top of a snowbank and look at the barely exposed signs at your feet. Standing on top of 3 feet of snow near the top of a mountain is not a bad way to spend the morning in the middle of June. Much more delightful than the same feat in February when it would just be depressing.
After I had my fill of snow, mountains, and sheep warnings (but no sightings) it was time to head out. I managed to squeeze in a little visit to the hotel where Stephen King wrote The Shining. It is not that I am a fan of that book per se but when you are faced with the opportunity to touch a piece of pop culture history like that I find it almost impossible to resist. And really, I had 8 more hours of driving ahead of me, let me have a little creepy thrill.
Once I left Colorado behind it was nothing but miles of miles of nothing but miles and miles of Wyoming and South Dakota. Like Texas but with more greenery. I had about 500 miles of driving to do between Rocky Mountain and Interior, South Dakota and I did 75 the whole way. What surprised me is that during the drive I barely saw a town or another car. How can states so big have so few people?
I made it to my campsite with 12 minutes to spare. Right on time.
[ed. note - I am behind schedule for the morning (of course) so I am not re-reading this. If I find it terrible tonight I will actually take the time to edit it properly. Or I will erase it and we will all pretend there was no post.]
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