The Things We Saw

 If you have ever gone on vacation to a National Park you know what I mean when I say it can be overwhelming.  You want to take pictures of everything, but then when you go back and look at your pictures you realize that there is no way to actually capture the magnitude of the grandeur of what you saw.  

But I attempted to do so, simply to capture proof positive that we were there.  Mostly I got pictures of Ellen at these places, for a record of her travels as much as anything else.  

Here is a picture looking across the valley toward the mountains; taken from our KOA cabin there at the edge of Estes Park.  The body of water there, which you can only see a sliver of, is actually Estes Lake, across the road from us.  We never did manage to get over to see it; but it is fairly extensive.  Maybe next time we will make time to see it.  

 

When we finally got into the park there were so many lovely views it was difficult to choose which to stop at and take photos of.  I tried to be sequential in my photos so I could remember what and were each one was, but I am afraid they are mostly jumbled now.  

In any case here are a couple taken at the beginning of our drive after we entered the park.  This one is of the area called Sheep Lakes, I believe.  We didn't unfortunately see any sheep while we were up there.


Here is another shot of the same valley:

 

From a park and ride area we took a convenient shuttle up to Bear Lake.  It is gorgeous up there.  We took the easy, handicapped accessible hike all the way around the lake, taking lovely pictures as we went.


Here is the lovely Ellen at Bear Lake:


Here, for good measure, is another shot of Bear Lake.  One that includes the type of trail that goes around it.


And here I will leave the story, since my hand is going to sleep.  The only thing I will add is if you go up there and need to use the restroom you very naturally need to prepare yourself for the reality of using an outhouse.  They are really nice as far as outhouses go, but there is no help for the stench.  

Bring your own hand sanitizer and/or wet wipes, if you remember. 




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