Rocky Mountain National Park

 Trish and I spent much of the past week at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, so we could visit Rocky Mountain National Park.  The Stanley itself was built in 1909 by F. O. Stanley, one of the twin Stanley brothers who invented dry plate photographic negatives and created the Stanley Steamer automobile. He was also a central figure in promoting the creation of the National Park.

In addition to driving our own car, we took an open-top van tour into the park.  This enabled us to go places we could not have gone in our own and avoid having to drive or deal with parking.  It was wonderful!

We took unpaved roads about which we would have never known on our own into places we never would have seen.

From above 12,000 feet the view went on forever.  Both of us, though, did feel some altitude complications through our days there.

There were still many patches of snow from last winter showing.  What used to be larger glaciers have now multiple small remnants.  Overall it is breathtaking.

On another day we had a ghost tour back at the hotel, but, even spirits could not compare with the wondrous beauty of nature!