Grinders Island: Back

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Back

We're back from our Winter Park adventure. This was not really a back country vacation more of a Rocky Mountain resort vacation in the high country. We were at 9000 feet for a week and it did take a little to get used to. The air is pretty thin those first few days and the air is pretty thick on the way home.

Winter Park is a ski area in a valley between mountains and is the mountain biking capitol of the US.

The saying is, you go to Vail to see, go to Breckenridge to be seen and go to Winter Park to ski.

Won't do a trip report in one sitting but here are the cliff notes (if anybody remembers cliff notes).

The photos are all iPhone shots at the moment as I'm still getting back into the swing of things at home.

Sunday - Nebraska is NOT that ugly at all - seriously. It was very beautiful in a flat Wisconsin style. . . but it's like that for a long long time.

Monday - Colorado without the Rockies would be a shit hole state. BUTT UGLY.

Monday - Denver and west - WOW - We did not get photos because I was driving and DJ was saying OMG but we drove into the most beautiful storm ever. In fact the Denver news was all about other peoples photos.

Picture this - leaving Denver with the Rockies looming in front of us. A huge storm is just hitting this side with cloud to ground lightning and rivers of rain dropping from the sky through dabbled orange sunlight. Golf ball size hail 20 miles away and traffic was crawling at 30mph. It was during this when we hit the first switchbacks.

Tuesday - explore Winter Park resort and look for the Moffat Tunnel which we eventually found.

Wednesday - The Rocky National Park terror ride. Hey - driving was OK but if you are someone who has never been to the Rockies or have ever seen REAL mountains that road is terrorizing as a passenger with no control.

Here is the only camera shot I have so far, Notice the lack of guard rails. What you don't see is this literally drops 1000 feet. They do not use guard rails because they want people to GO SLOW. This is at the top where it was relatively "flat". When you are in a car you can not see ANYTHING but blacktop and sky!