Another evening hot tub jaunt and complimentary breakfast were enjoyed during our 1 nite’ stay at La Quinta Inn and Suites. We pushed off around 9am. This day was overcast and the weather became more dismal as we journeyed on northwest toward Rocky Mountain National Park. It was quite cold and reminded us of our Yellowstone experience last June! We drove around the park to view the various famous overlooks but it was a futile effort as we were surrounded in thick fog. At one point we were on the highest paved road in the United States driving on a mountainous switchback road. It was eerie not being able to see what was off either side. I’m not sure which is worse: actually seeing the drop off or knowing it is out there and seeing nothing but fog! During our drive, Odesco could be heard chanting under his breath, “Lynx, golden eagle, bobcat, cougar, big horn sheep, rattlesnake…” He was very studious in the gift shop/museum, knew all of these creatures found a home in the park, and perused the landscape hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these…but it was not to be today. We did see plenty of elk, even a few with full antlers. As we were leaving the park we saw many cars pulled over and knew there must be an animal sighting. When we pulled closer, we could see a large nest in a pine tree with what looked like a white fuzzy head poking out. We all expected to see an eagle…but to our surprise it was a great horned owl! We could not get a better look at the fuzzy head but after googling it, I'm pretty sure it was an owlet! Either way, it was another gift from the Creator of all. After the owl sighting, we enjoyed the antics of prairie dogs standing guard near their burrows on the side of the road. After leaving Rocky Mountain National Park we had a long day driving since that was our final 'touristy' destination before we head east to New Jersey. We stopped for dinner at 8:15 pm and arrived at the Super 8 Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska at 11:15 pm…we lost an hour due to the time zone change. Thankfully they were able to situate us in 2 rooms next to each other but there was no adjoining door so this was the 1st time during our trip where Mark stayed in one room with Philip, Curtis, and Odesco, and I was with the girls and Luke next door. Luke could not wait until the morning when he could go hang with the guys in the ‘man cave’ before we all headed to the complimentary breakfast.
Like I said, it was a bit foggy!
Fog or no fog...this is still a beautiful place~
Lots of rushing water...and many posted signs warning tourists to stay out of the river due to the danger of being swept away~Another somewhat 'fogless' viewA little more promising...is the fog lifting?What do you think?The higher we climbed, the thicker the fog became.This was just a bit unnerving since we were on the highest paved road in America and beyond those pine trees there is definitely a drop off....very thankful for bright yellow and white lines!!Still pretty in an eerie sort of way!A herd of elk...there were quite a few more in the distance...A full rack...sorry for the rear view perspective!See the little white fuzzy head poking out of its nest?We were all surprised to see a Mama owl peering at us since we expected an eagle!The lighting was tricky to capture this owl keenly peering at all the curious onlookers below~How kind of the Lord to allow us to be driving out of the park when this owl was perched in plain view...another tangible evidence of Him orchestrating the details of our trip!!
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