Blizzard in RMNP

With the help of Jess' borrowed National Parks pass, Marc and I drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park on Wednesday. The forecast was grim but since time in Colorado was running slim, we decided to chance it and hope for the best.

With the rain pouring, we overstayed our welcome at all of the visitors centers. I usually skim the displays but I scoured each one, some twice, just to kill some time out of the rain.

As always, Rocky Mountain NP didn't let us down with wildlife viewing. Herds of elk lined the grassy areas in the foothills, unphased by the weather and the cars pulled over to take pictures.

Rain quickly turned into a blizzard as we got into the mountains. It made for slow, treacherous driving and the best scenic routes were still closed for the winter.

After we saw everything we could in the park (not much), we headed back out to Estes Park and back home. After some prodding, Marc got me to go with him to check out the famous Stanley Hotel in town. It's the site that they say inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. I haven't read the book or seen the movie so I didn't really care. I was wrong. It was a cool place. We didn't do the ghost tour, just looked around, and I pictured how cool it'd be to throw an elaborate ball there.

The Stanley Hotel

 On the ride home, we listened to a great podcast of This American Life on job creation -- you know, all the politicians say they're going to "create jobs" but they don't really create jobs, they just take credit for jobs that get created while they're in office.

We got back in time to hangout with Dave, Jess, Julia and Chantel for what became our "going away"/ early birthday party for Marc party. We had pizza, drinks, cake, played a round of Risk and partied late.