“The shadow from the starlight Is softer than a lullaby.” – John Denver

August 21, 2019

“The shadow from the starlight
Is softer than a lullaby.” – John Denver

Castle Rock

The time has come to say goodbye once again to Colorado, at least for the moment. Our final days in Estes Park followed by a drive back to Colorado Springs with a brief stop for lunch in the small community of Castle Rock before one last night at our Colorado house before boarding an early, early morning flight back to Key West. Kathy was staying an additional week and Dakota and Sloane made the drive straight through from Estes Park to their New Mexico home in Clovis.

 

Before departing, we had a final chance to spend some quality time together. Taking a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park, spending a little time shopping in downtown Estes and enjoying a wonderful final meal at the Rock Inn Mountain Tavern with our friends.

 

Rocky Mountain National Park was designated in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson and is currently the third most visited National Park in the United States with an average of 4.5 million visitors a year.  It is a huge, sprawling beautiful place with the main entry points being Estes Park in the East and Grand Lake in the West and encompasses a huge swath of the Rocky Mountain frontrange. 

The park is filled with mountains of course but there are also beautiful pristine alpine lakes, meadows, tundra and a vast array of wildlife that call the place home. Our visit this trip was cursory at best, but I really wanted to give Dakota and Sloane who had never been a brief introduction to the beauty and majesty of the place, which you cannot help but get even when just driving through.

I know that the park can be and usually is overcrowded with tourists, yet I still just love being there. Even massive crowds seem to disappear if you take just a few steps off the beaten path and at any moment you could have a magical wildlife encounter. And even if you don’t the natural beauty of the surroundings make it easy to see why so many people visit the area. It is truly spectacular.

 

For our final evening in Estes, I wanted to grab a meal at our favorite restaurant with some of my favorite people, so we joined our friends Kerry and Andy and had a special surprise visitor. A friend who I grew up with in Indianapolis and who is currently living in Ft. Collins, Richard, had seen my postings on facebook and offered to drive over to join us for dinner.

Michael and Richard 

It was pretty cool because other than being facebook friends, we had not seen in other in maybe 35 years or so, so we obviously had a little catching up to do. It was really nice of him to make the effort to come see us and though we only hung out through dinner, it was a cool and entirely unexpected blast from the past. 

 

The next morning we were up early and headed back to Colorado Springs, but not before stopping off for lunch at a cool little microbrewery in the town of Castle Rock called Wild Blue Yonder. They had good food and beer and we were able to drive around the famous castle shaped large rock mountain that gives the town its name. We have often passed it on the highway, but this was the first time we ever stopped to get a closer look.

 

https://www.nationalparks.org/explore-parks/rocky-mountain-national-park