July 19: Trail Ridge Road

Today, we packed up the cabin in Grand Lake and headed across Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road.  This is a view from "Fairview Overlook"

 These two are panoramic shots from the alpine visitor center.  It was really cold and wet!  The elevation here is 11,796 feet and we could definitely feel it.

 A little further along the road, we came upon this bachelor herd of elk.

 Panoramic view of the elk and photographers

This one shows how far away we really were from the elk.

This is NOT the road we drove - it's Fall River Road.  Only open one direction.  And it's dirt.

 A view of mountains from another overlook on the road.

 When we came to a pull-out called Sheep Lakes, there was a bunch of traffic stopped on the road.  Why?  The bighorn sheep were in the meadow.  Most of them had already crossed the road and headed up the hill.  But the three in the picture below needed to catch up.

We were really lucky to see so many bighorn sheep. We stopped back later in the week and there hadn't been any more since Sunday.