Trail Ridge Road

If you are looking for a touristy town to do some shopping and eat some ice cream, travel highway 34 West and stop at Estes Park, Colorado! You can even visit the famous historic Stanley Hotel! The Stanley is a great place to stay overnight and maybe glimpse a ghost or just take the ghostly tour! You will have to make reservations in advance! Tours fill up fast!

If you are looking for a ride, go through the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park and pedal away! Be prepared to pay at the gate. If you are in a vehicle, it will cost you twenty dollars. If you are just going to ride your bike through, it will cost you roughly ten dollars.

Matt's Cycling Perspective: The scenery and the smooth and paved roads are well worth the journey. The climb starts out gradual and it is not too strenuous at the bottom. The road begins to climb and has a max grade of about eight percent. You will continue to climb all the way to the top. There are a couple false summits near the tundra area! Since this is a well-traveled tourist area, you will have to share the road with many cars! There are many areas to pull off all along the road. Cars are constantly in and out of these areas and making left, right, and u-turns. There are tourists behind the wheels of these cars and they are more concerned about the elk they are photographing or their next rest area. The road becomes tight closer to the top due to the walls of snow that align the sides. These walls make a great photo! Know that the road does not open until around Memorial Day. It depends on the current weather and the amount of snow fall from the previous winter. This year was a record amount of snowfall and it is the most this area has had in the last thirty years! Be prepared for roads with shoulders of snow and snow run off that could lead to streams of water that make for slick areas. Overall, this was one of my favorite rides! Well worth the journey!

Erica and Olivia's Perspective: No Cooper this trip! My little Honda Fit could only hold Matt, my father, Olivia, and all of our gear including fishing rods. Thanks to my father and his season pass, we did not have to pay upon entering the gate to the park. We saw elk just to the side of the road when we entered! Bring your camera! We snapped some shots right away! The roads were all paved and there were numerous places to easily pull off the road and to snap a photo or to sit and wait for the cyclists! There are also places to stop and check out scenic "markers" and check out scenic overlooks! There were also a few restroom stops if you drank too much coffee! For the most part they were relatively clean. Let's just say there was no need to pull off and pee behind a bush! With the amount of tourists, there is no way you could even go without being spotted!

One of the first scenic areas has an overlook and fenced area to walk around the edge of the mountain. Great place to take a photo or two. The next rest area that has restrooms has a huge overlook where you can see all the way down and see what you have traveled so far! There are tons of cute little chipmunks that love pretzels too! The Clark's Nutcracker will also snatch a piece of pretzel with its beak and ruffle its feathers at the chipmunks!

The tundra is a great place to walk across the snow and take more photos of the snow-capped mountains. You will be welcomed right away by the picture-posing marmot! He is very cute and looking for food to fatten up for his eight months of hibernation! There is a warning sign to stay off of the fragile tundra. Unfortunately, many do not including three large vans full of University of Northern Colorado students who were trampling over it and taking data. Olivia was very upset!

Continue to make your way up and you will be in close proximity with the snow walls! However, there is no room to pull off and snap photos here! You will drive over some false summits, but eventually make it to the summit! There is a nice visitor's center just passed the summit and on your way down on the other side. Overall, this was a beautiful drive! The scenic areas and many spots to pull off made it great to be the tourist and snap the photos and view wildlife! I used these same spots to wait for my cycling family members to pass me by! Olivia and I were hoping to stop and fish. However, the streams were too high and rough and the small lakes were still frozen. This early in the season makes fishing difficult. I hope we return to camp and to fish next time around!