[Sat 6/11 - Sun 6/12]
Saturday was a driving day as we covered just over 700 miles between Anaconda, MT and Cheyenne, WY. The drive was beautiful and surprisingly easy, with very little traffic and 75- or 80-mph speed limits most of the way. We started with thick cloud cover, but quickly transitioned to puffy white clouds against a beautiful blue sky for the rest of the drive.
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| Snow-caps in the distance |
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| Painted sky |
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| Ribbon highway |
We left Anaconda around 9am and rolled into Cheyenne around 7pm, checked into our hotel (Fairfield Inn - a convenient, clean and comfortable spot), cleaned up a bit, and headed to dinner at Wyoming's Rib and Chop House. We decided to splurge a bit on a nice steak dinner before 5 nights of camping in RMNP (not to suggest that we don't eat well in camp!). After dinner, we drove around Cheyenne for a bit before heading back to the hotel. It's a classic western town - reminded us both of our stop last year in Ogden, Utah - with wide streets, a fun looking bar/nightlife district, and lot's of shops selling antiques, western wear, outdoor gear, etc. Plus lot's of Jesus billboards...
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| Bring it in |
We'll make the short drive to Estes Park, stock up on groceries, then head into the park. We're camping for the next 5 nights at Glacier Basin Campground, which Karri strategically reserved for its proximity to Bear Lake Trailhead - launch-point for some of the best hiking trails in the park (so we've read). After that, we have 2 nights at an inn near Estes Park, then 3 more nights of camping before we head to Denver and beyond.
We're not expecting much cell-coverage for the next 5 days, so posts may be sparse (or non-existent) until we get to the Inn on Fall River on Friday.
We're both very excited to explore the park. Hoping we did enough conditioning to handle some challenging hikes, and that we're not adversely impacted by the elevation - our campsite is at 8,500' and most of our planned hikes go up from there. We'll see...
