Crossing the Continental Divide

Friday, 9/28

We had the RV all hitched up and ready to go before bed last night, so we could leave quickly and easily this morning, since we'll have a long driving day today.    The scenery along the way was just gorgeous....the Colorado River flowed next to the highway for our first two hours or so.  At many points, LOTS of white water and rocks and turbulence (which made me think of our kayaking expedition on a different portion of the Colorado River and gave me the heebie-jeebies).  Also, the highway was built on such a steep mountainside that the lanes for oncoming traffic were propped above us, like an overpass (except that we were parallel to each other).

This is taken from the higher level (westbound), and you can see the lower level closer to the river (from Google images).

By 9:30am we reached the "Schnappszahl" of 90,000 miles on the odometer, which means we've driven 7,265 miles so far.  Can you believe it?!

The mountains got higher and more majestic as we approached the Continental Divide....covered in dark green spruce trees with brilliant yellow clumps of aspens.  In the far distance--snow-covered peaks.  Our temperature started out close to freezing this am (there was thick frost on the windshield) and reached a "high" of 39.  As we approached Vail, we climbed up a LONG incline over the Vail Pass Summit of 10,603 feet.  Shortly thereafter, driving between--and in the shadows of--two very tall mountains the temperature descended briefly to 32!!  That's life at high altitude for you.

First snow cap sighting from the car (I took this through the side truck window)

We crossed the Continental Divide about 1/4th of the way through the 2-mile-long Eisenhower tunnel, traveling at high speed.   Kind of anti-climactic to cross it while driving in a tiled, level tunnel but pretty amazing from an engineering standpoint.

We left the highway to go north toward the Rocky Mountain National Park, up and up and up, through old gold-mining towns on winding roads.  The aspens had all turned mostly brilliant yellow with the very rare red-orange burst of color for contrast.  The yellow is every bit as beautiful as the maples in Deerfield, but I miss the orange/red and hope there will still be some to see when we get home.

The aspen looked even brighter yellow than in this photo, just like the maples in New England

Lots of political signs along the road, mostly Republican.  Although I did see this hand-painted sign in one teeny town: "Buddha for Commissioner".  That just cracked me up.

We finally got to the Spruce Lake RV Park in Estes Park by 2pm.  We decided to splurge on a place with LOTS of amenities for our final days in the national parks....it's cold at night, and we wanted full hook-ups so that we can stay warm and comfy at night.  The RV park is only about quarter full, but I suspect that will change in the next few hours.