Philadelphia to Denver and Estes Park

 We decided to stay at the Marriott on Friday evening so that we could just walk over to the airport gates and go. We had dinner there at the restaurant on site and breakfast in the morning. We always sit at the same table for some reason. Very convenient, we made it through TSA Pre-check quickly and after a quick stop at the Admirals Club we headed to the gate to board.  We had booked an exit row which has a load of extra leg room and the flight was on time and comfortable.  Once in Denver we claimed our luggage and took a shuttle to National Car rental to pick up our Nissan Murano. Our first stop was Estes Park which is just at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. There is also a tram that we wanted to check out for views of the mountains. 

The drive into Estes Park was beautiful and uneventful. Once in town we realized that there was a huge Scottish festival going on. It now makes sense why hotel rooms were hard to come by. 

We were too early to go to our hotel and check in so we headed towards the tram. As we passed through town there was a bit of a traffic jam which we realized was being caused by a group of Elk. There were about 10 female elk and a large male in a small grassy patch, and then several other males trying to get to them. The male on the grass was keeping all of the other males away. 

Next we headed to the Tram which goes from Estes Park which is at 7522 elevation, the tram takes you to about 9000 feet at the top of Prospect Mountain.  The views were beautiful but had to be captured by phone because my camera auto off feature had not worked and my battery was dead for my camera. 

After we left the tram we still had a bit of time before we checked in so we drove back down highway 36 to an overlook as we entered Estes Park. We wanted to take a few pictures from there. 

On the way there we passed the Elk again where only the females were present. 

As we were taking pictures we saw a group of people searching the rocks below the sign and realized that one of the women had dropped a cell phone into the rocks. They had about given up on finding it and no one could fit an arm there. Conrad wasn’t about to give up and he did locate the phone and drag it out enough to be visible with a stick but we still couldn’t reach it. We needed someone one with very long skinny arms and a car of young women pulled up just in time. With their help we were able to reach the phone and reunite it with the owner. Good deed done for the day. 

Girl on the left had the skinny arms! 🙂 

We drove around the town a bit more to get a few more photos before check in. 

We checked into the hotel and went next door in the parking lot to an unassuming restaurant across the parking lot named Bird and Jim. It was a plain brown building with a sign above that just said “Restaurant”. We had a really great bottle of wine from Bourgogne and just some finger foods – short ribs sliders and mac and cheese and fries. The food was amazing and the service was fantastic. We headed back across the parking lot to our room at the Alpine Ridge motel – basic clean rooms with a view just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.  

The view from our room

In. the morning we are heading into Rocky Mountain National park.