Our day trip to Estes Park started out with weird sightings.
The first one being a car covered in trolls, their multicolored synthetic hair blowing in the wind and little creepy wrinkled faces smiling at all the cars passing by, with 4 men crammed inside the vehicle traveling at residential road speed in the middle lane of the highway. I convinced Patrick against his will to slow down and let several cars pass us, just so I could get a picture. Naturally, he felt uneasy about this, since he was skeptic of why 4 men would be driving so slow on a highway in a car covered in trolls.
The second would be this gas station.
The third being the fact we drove through a down called Hygiene and passed Gay street.
And fourth, The Stanley Hotel.
Never having actually seen The Shining, myself, I knew I wanted to browse the hotel that inspired the Stephen King hit, and Dumb and Dumber's hotel setting. Patrick was terrified, but I talked him into it.
We witnessed the Stanley Steamer, the vehicles used to bring Colorado people to Estes Park during summer for cooler weather, walked around the lobby, and sat on the gorgeous stark white front porch for a while to look at the blue and purple majestic peaks.
They only allowed registered guests to go upstairs, but we found a set of stairs out back that went all the way up to the fourth floor (where most of the paranormal activity is suppose to happen), and looked down the hallway. Strangely enough, while looking back on pictures, we noticed a suspicious looking cloudy spot in the hallway.
I think this picture says it all: You may not see a ghost at the Stanley Hotel, but the ghosts see you.
I tickled a bear, doesn't matter if it was alive or not.
Then we paid $20 to drive through Rocky Mountain National Park. We thought that was a little steep, but decided it was worth it after driving to the top of the mountain to Communities Trail. No measurement of money could ever be compared to the views we saw here. It was breath taking.
Watching the temperature drop from 85F to 61F on the drive up felt as amazing as it sounds.
The plants and animals that survive these conditions are truly amazing. Can you see this camouflaged bird?
We also saw marmots.
And chipmunks, which was oh so hard to resist feeding their precious little faces.
And Elk grazing.
And turkey.
We stayed at the top of the mountain for as long as our stomachs would allow, and then it was time to drive back down to town for some grub. Speaking of steep, the drive back down the mountain felt a little safer than on the way up, where you could easily freak yourself out at how sharp the drop off was with no railings to slow your descend.
We walked to Bob and Tony's for some pizza, window shopped the main strip, and topped off the afternoon with old fashioned ice cream in waffle cones!
While in town, we saw a hummingbird sitting on the edge of a waterfall-fountain, drinking the water. It was very cool, and I almost got a picture of it, that is until Patrick yelled, "Oh my gosh! IT'S A HUMMINGBIRD!"......and scared it away!
That evening, we pegged down our extremely busy friend Heather, who agreed on some sushi during catch up. The chef must have been bored, because he spent a lot of time creating this masterpiece for us! We had a hard time digging in, sad to be eating such pretty art. Our waiter was so funny, and explained to us to not be scared of the dragon, which unlike in other mythology where dragons are evil, in China they represent good things. I thought it was sweet of him to make sure we inhaled our food in a positive light.
But how could anyone in their right mind be anything but positive after looking at views like this all day??
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