Trail Ridge Road

The Trail Ridge Road is "highest continuous paved road in the United States", continuous meaning that it just doesn't go somewhere and stop like is the case with the Mt. Evans road. The road is closed in winter and was opened only on the Memorial Day weekend in late May. This year Colorado has seen much less snow than usual and I think the road could've been opened much sooner but what can you do. This clip shows you just how much snow there was last year in June and what they have to do to clear the road.

My ride on Saturday. On Sunday we turned back in Grand Lake.

Me and some colleagues had agreed to go there on Sunday but on Saturday I was kind of bored and didn't know what to do so I went ahead and had a quick look-see. The entry fee is $20 per car but the year pass is $40 so I bought that instead since I will definitely be coming back after the unpaved Fall River Road is opened around the 4th of July.

The road starts from Estes Park and goes west to Grand Lake with the highest point being at 12,183 ft (3,713 m) which is well above the tree line. In the Rocky Mountain National Park you can see some cool wildlife from deer to marmots (closely related to groundhogs) to elk and even bighorn sheep although we didn't get that lucky.

Grand Lake, both the town and the actual lake. The lake is the largest natural lake in Colorado. All the larger ones are reservoirs.

 

The Continental Divide explained in layman's terms: pour some water on the left side of the plaque and it will eventually drain into the Atlantic Ocean or right side and it will end up in the Pacific Ocean

This is the most snow that we saw up there. Just goes to show how bad the drought in Colorado is at the moment when even the mountain tops are almost completely bare.

A marmot

I need a better camera. This looked so cool up there but the picture is anything but

Don't be shy now