Day Twenty-One

Well, this isn't where I thought we would end up tonight. We had plans, we had everything mapped out, we knew what we were going to do. Mother Nature had other plans. The weather the last couple of days suddenly changed to fall/winter conditions. Last night we lived through the craziest wind storm. Notice I say lived, because I definitly did not sleep through it. Apparently it is always this windy so it didn't faze anyone else. After watching the weather this morning, we decided to check out of our room a day early and drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park and then head West. That was only the first change of plans. We packed up and checked out. We arrived at RMNP to find out that we could only go the first 7 miles of the 48 mile trip across the park. The road was closed due to snow at milepost 7. We made the decision to skip the park and head back towards highway 70.



We had met some people on the train yesterday that said we had to go to Leadville to the ghost towns. We decided to do that instead. Well, low and behold that is at 10,000 feet and due to snow, we scratched that idea too. At the end of the day I looked and pictures and realized that it looks like we would have had a depressing day, but really it turned out pretty good. We are spending the night in Grand Junction, Colorado and tomorrow we will see what a new day brings.

This was as far as we made it into RMNP. The weather was 35 degrees and there was a good chance of snow.
Look....it's snow. Just like the weatherman promised. Actually, the roads weren't too bad and we only had to drive in it for a little while. The next stop on our journey was to see the grave of Buffalo Bill Cody.

After coming down in elevation, we saw the signs of fall. Scott took this picture along the Colorado River.

We pulled over in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and hiked to the pioneer cemetary to find the grave of Doc Holiday.

Kid Curry was also buried at the pioneer cemetary.

Just west of Glenwood Springs is the location of the 1994 Storm King Fire. We stopped at a park to see the memorial. It was very moving to see the stones with each persons picture and history on it.

Looking up at Storm King Mountain.

The memorial statue.

More signs of Fall.