Up the Trail

 After we visited Bear Lake, we drove the Trail Ridge Road, which leads up out of the tree line into the tundra.  The visitor center up there is at 11,796 ft.  I didn't get a picture of the actual visitor center; if you want you can Google it and see.  It was jam-packed with tourists; we had to drive around the parking lot a couple of times to get a place to park.  

But the views of the alpine tundra were spectacular:

 

The vegetation up on the tundra is all quite stunted; any grass, shrubs or flowers are quite short due to the winds up there.  


In the distance in the above photo you might be able to discern dark little dots.  Those are members of the elk herd.  Apparently they are able to get enough nourishment up on the tundra and they appear to enjoy hanging out there; even though the lines of tourists gawking at them from cars must be annoying.


We did our own gawking and then moved on.  

After we came down from the tundra we looked for a picnic area, ate a late lunch and then went back to the cabin.

Doing this tour of the Rocky Mountain National Park took a complete day, pretty much.  We needed to get back to rest because we had activities planned for the evening.  It was absolutely beautiful up in the mountains, and I do hope I am able to make it back there again some day.

But it was this day that I started feeling...not so well.

More on that later.

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