Day 8 - Estes Park

After saying goodbye to the rental car *snif*, we hit the road through Denver to Northern Colorado.

After a little bit of challenge finding the campground at 1am (we seem to always take advantage of “late check in”), we awoke Day 8 in Estes Park , Colorado.

Unfortunately we had two minor problems:

1. Unbeknownst to us, the largest Scottish/Irish festival in the US was occurring this weekend in Estes Park! Normally this would be great news, except that I did not budget $25(!) per person per day for this…
2. The weather was unseasonably cold and wet…bordering on snow weather!

So, we tried to make the best of the day. After a game of mini golf at the campground in freezing drizzle, we drove up to the visitor center for Rocky Mountain National Park. Here I was able to get information and firm up plans for the following day’s hike while Sammy and Jason attended a Ranger talk about animal skin and bones…very cool stuff.

Meanwhile, Jessi and Derek had some teenager time out in the RV. I think they needed a break from the adults and the little kids.

After the visitor center we went down into town. We avoided the shopping area and headed straight for the grocery store. Steph has been amazing on this trip with stretching our supplies for meals/snacks/etc, but the cupboards had become bare so she needed to do some shopping.

Funny thing is, all the festival-goers were on their late afternoon break and had also come to the store. Steph she had never seen so many people in kilts in one place….even in Scotland!!

While she was doing that I had to deal with the ever-present RV plumbing problems. I had been fighting a pipe in the bathroom since before we left and a I thought a trip to the TrueValue Hardware would score the piece I needed to finally win the war…I was wrong. :(

We ended the day by heading back to the campground. An elderly local man was telling regional ghost stories in the lodge so Steph and the kids attended while I watched dinner cook. We finally got in a full family game of Clue as well, and I won on my first try. The kids were a little ticked since they have been playing so much and thought they would defeat the adults easily, but it truly was a lucky guess on my part…just don’t tell my kids. ;)

-Dave