Actually, we spent part of each day on Trail Ridge Road.

Here is a picture of Dia and Al one of those days.



As most of you know after passing Rainbow Curve, you are above the tree line and over two miles above sea level. This is a fantastically foreign and rare world.

The tiny little flowers all look so familiar, because they are miniature cousins to so many larger low land plants. It is amazing to watch regular size honey bees and butterflies swarming over this Lilliputian world.

What is more amazing is the extremes of weather to which those tiny fragile plants are subjected. We experienced a little of that extreme.

August is part of the "Colorado monsoon" season (thunder storms nearly every afternoon). One moment we watch herds of elk casually grazing upon the tiny tundra grasses.



The next moment a roaring violent storm with rapid lightning strikes sweeps over the land.

We took shelter in the Alpine Visitors Center during one of the afternoon "monsoons". In that tundra world, we vertical humans would have been as lightning rods.

As quick as the storm came, it blew away. Minutes after leaving the Alpine Center we found ourselves driving through about a half an inch of snow left behind by that AUGUST storm. (There are no pictures of the snow, because the clouds made it too, dark.)

Moments later the sun appeared and caused the cool rain water to vaporize and raise from the valleys to form more clouds.



To experience this land is humbling and exhilarating.

Go To:

Fun at Never Summer Ranch

To the shore of Lake Hiayaha

The First Day Picnic

The next day at Adam's Falls

Hiking Big Meadow