not much to see as we zoom across the sea of farmland as the sun sets. sometime at night we change engineers & conductors at Creston IA and get behind a slow moving freight train, who develops engine trouble setting us back 2 hours in the night. we back into denver across the flat river passed mile high stadium into the non descript station. we can see the snow covered rockies in the distant and feel like we are finally making some progress.
the rockies
our train conductor is great giving us a running description of what we are passing. the parks dept supplies a person during the summer who does this but it ends at labor day. i told one conductor that maybe they should have a recording to describe what we are passing through, who knows.
mountain stream
one of the first things we see is gross dam 3 different views the last one from the back but lovely. built by a man named gross from germany.
gross dam
we travel through tunnels and exit to another grand view, you have to wonder about the people who built this railroad what they must have gone through . here is the yellow school house that was built for the children of the workers but never used because it too cold there.
yellow school house
it’s difficult to photograph from the train because of reflection in the windows as we twist and turn around the mountains. but granby co was our destination for the day, an unmaned station and i wondered what we would find. i had to call the rental car people from frazer
fraizer, co
the stop before ours. here we are
granby train station
it's halloween every where
we load our bags and hop in our little rental car heading to Grand lake and rocky mountain national park, another leg of our exploration.
shadow mountain lake
shadow mountain lake
we decide to head to rocky mountain national park instead of grand lake because we are 2 hours late and the hotel will be there and we are loosing daylight.
snow capped mountain
the road is closed driving through the park, it closes in september because fo the exposed winds and snow at higher elevations, this i didn’t know and was disappointed. we could only go for 10 miles limiting out enjoyment but we made the most of our time. i was the wild game spotter and driver, we came upon a meadow with some grazing elk. i took out my 70-200 with a 1.5 extension and showed mary what she couldn’t see with the naked eye.
grazing elk
we really couldn’t get close to the herd but we tried exploring. i saw a cute red fox that mary took pictures of but because it was on her side of the car. we did pull into parking spots the tried to explore the trails
mary on the trail
being silly writing hearts in the snow
snow writing
but we did come upon a lone grazing cow
young cow
elk cow
who drew a crowd along the road as people stopped to take pictures. she seemed a bit curious about us but not enough to stop eating
elk cow
but after she left to join the herd there wasn’t much we say other than snow covered fields. soon the sun crossed the mountains and we headed to grand lake.
welcome grand lake
so we leave you here as we unpack our bags and darkness settles around us and we lay on the bed in exhaustion.
Fuzzypictures's Weblog 
November 2, 2010 at 5:35 pm |
Great trip