Western States Trip Day 6: Alpine Drive

It's the highest paved road at least in the Contiguous 48, and possibly beyond. State Highway 34, as it crosses the Continental Divide between Estes Park and Grand Lake, CO. All visitor guides (and in person advice) recommend the drive, as well as checking out the Alpine Visitor's Center (above the treeline, midway), and any the best of the advice echoes what is recommended for hikes: get out there early before the crowds hit.

Well, that's just not what we do.

Though time continues to pass between then and now and some details escape me, I am certain that we once again did not break camp prior to 9:30 or so. Now, in fairness: my camping history with my friends contains a history of us mostly just busting ass to break down camps and get going - to the extent that the automaton-like quality of the proceedings often suck a bit or a lot of fun out. I think many aspects of my family's leisurely camp mornings are to be appreciated. And frankly, I don't mind a little alone time before everyone else rolls out of the tent. But the realities of camping in a national park (or, at least, THIS national park) is that: 1) you go later in the day, your chances of surprise thunderstorms go up dramatically 2) crowds increase. An early start, then, seems a no-brainer.

But that's just not what we do.

Anyway, we did stop by Kind Coffee again, adding an additional 20 minutes or so to our morning (but I don't regret it), then headed back towards the park, swinging around to take Trail Ridge Road, north of our campground (all near the main eastern entrance). I'll say right now that it is flat out torturous to be the driver on a trip up Trail Ridge Drive, amid that scenery. It is spectacular; world-class, but you daren't divert your eyes from the task at hand (e.g. staying on the road) for too long. As such, we did a number of stops along the way, noting the remarkable drop of temperature at each successive one. We were going to be rising about 4,000 feet in the course of about 12 miles.

The ladies at our first stop. Big Thompson River in the valley below. This seemed high up at the time.

Daddy above the treeline (~11,500 ft). This photo is how I remembered we stopped for coffee. You can see the three southernmost mountains in the Mummy Range (Chapin, Chiquita, and Ypsilon) in the background. If Sharon and I ever return, a summit  those three peaks will be among our (pretty much exclusively) backcountry experiences. Note: the damn hair on the camera lens that pretty much blemished all our blue sky photos pretty much from this day on.

At the top of the little summit trail from the Alpine Visitor's Center  that takes you up above 12,000 ft. Windy! And cold enough that long underwear top /t-shirt combo and gloveless hands were no longer enough. Hi, intruding hair!

So, there was spectacular view after spectacular view. But what these photos are not capturing at all is that there was a caravan of vehicles headed up the highway and you would see the same folks over and over again at the stops, and the Alpine Visitor's Center was a madhouse. Full service restaurant, jam-packed gift center, and interpretive display. We spent a little time in each (having our picnic lunch in the cafeteria), and I was feeling rather claustrophobic.

Sharon and I outside the observation deck at the Alpine Visitor's Center

I did learn some good stuff at the interpretive display, and they really hammered home the notion of the fragile tundra ecosystem. A tundra basically exists because of the cold. And it can occur either because of altitude or latitude. In either case, plants are generally short & stubby and grow (and recover!) slowly, even in spite of many adaptive traits designed to protect themselves from the high winds and radiant UV. In fact, some species take over one hundred years to grow an inch.

Anyway, back to our experience.Selfie sticks were everywhere and there was this one goof who - and I'm not exaggerating here - every time I saw him at a stop, he was walking along staring into his phone which was attached to the end of a selfie stick. I'm not sure he ever diverted his eyes to actually look around. He was much more concerned with the documentation and, doubtless, some video-based version of his own Oliopolis and was content to live his life out purely through a viewfinder world.

I was struck throughout our visit, also, at the number of international visitors. Which makes total sense. Per my earlier rumination, that's exactly what I'd expect to see were I to visit the most spectacular/historically significant/famous any country had to offer: an array of the generally well-heeled from across the globe. I did have one related International Incident I will remark upon, however. At that Summit Trail, on the short descent just after that last family photo above, I saw a group of three young Japanese women at the top of their selfie game. On top of the world and loving it. Next thing I know, one of them has tramped off across the tundra - the tundra about which there is constant KEEP OFF signage - given its fragile nature which I detailed above. Now here I am watching this woman from another country bagging another in what what probably a long train of selfie conquests. Now, were I to go take a crap or carve my initials into rock on Mt. Fuji, I should expect (and rightly so) to be castigated, and roundly. Here she was endangering a sacred place in a threatened ecosystem in my country and I was pissed. In a decidedly non-Dan moment, I glared, motioned back, and hissed "BACK ON THE TRAIL." She promptly complied.

Shortly after that, we were back in the car. But the whole experience did not help me shake the persistent bummery regarding my whole "overrun" perception of our trip, thus far. As it turns out, I think that, for many people, Alpine Visitor's Center is a turnaround point. Physically, that is. For me, it was the point of my emotional turnaround, I think. Once you cross over the Continental Divide, the views are a little less dramatic, the peaks less visually striking. And the crowds, such as they still were, much more sparse. And it was upon crossing the Divide that the seeds of my softening view, planted over a cinnamon roll & coffee at Kind Coffee the day before, took hold and sprouted.

It had been one of my goals to see the Colorado River. Not the Grand Canyon rapids, nor the beleaguered source of water for Cities-That-Should-Not-Even-Exist, farther south. But a humble little stream that originates from La Poudre Pass, not far at all from where we would be able to access it via the Coyote Valley Trail on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I think, now, that there was a perfect storm of my long-held fascination with the Old West, my recent viewing of the Ken Burns documentary on the subject, my love of geography, and - I guess, maybe some general "unfinished business" sense that lingered from my Escalante Trip from 2006, leading up to this particular experience. But what I can say now is that the very serene and generally non-peopled Coyote Valley Trail ended up being one of the highlights of our trip, from my perspective. After explaining (hopefully, in not too much boring detail) the significance of what The Colorado would become farther downstream, we left the kids to splash & play and Sharon & I went on a leisurely, beautiful hike.

Lucy is in a kind of pose-y phase of her life. Her sister and dad are lost in reflection.

The Coyote Valley is peaceful and serene, with a vast prairie stretching out before a line of peaks to the northwest. The Colorado lies in the southwest corner, almost up against the mountains that make up the western slope of the Continental Divide. Then - it happened.  Sharon and I saw our first moose. Ever. Kind of crazy, considering we live in MN, but there you go. And not just a moose. But a momma and baby who got just close enough to regard us warily, before continuing slowly on.

They actually got even closer than this, but we never got another good one of momma and baby in the same shot

I once heard about wildlife viewing: if more than half of a group is watching you; or if a single animal is not able to resume what it would be doing if you were not around, you're too close. I'm glad we weren't too close.

This was one of the most amazing scenes I saw; but maybe not really evident till you really look closer. A tree-filled valley with a little lake...right on the precipice of what may well have been a 2,000 ft drop into the Beaver Creek Valley, below.

After that experience, things really did change for me. Sharon actually took the wheel for our drive back over, and I got to truly experience those amazing, spectacular views in uninterrupted sequence. It was a contemplative Dan that broke bread with his family over the evening camp meal that night.