Friday, July 15, 2011

Hump Day (or the middle of our trip)--Steamboat to Boulder via Rocky Mountain National Park

Beautiful, beautiful day today. The wildflowers south of Steamboat were absolutely gorgeous! This picture doesn't even come close to capturing the beauty that we saw, but we were on the go the whole time. When we stopped for construction, this is the pic I snapped.

Speaking of construction, I have never seen anything like that. I took video I will show you later. Pavement Recycling. Trucks tearing up the pavement followed by other trucks laying it down. Just driving by on our motorcycle we were overwhelmed by the heat and noise. I don't envy those construction workers.

I was excited to go through Rocky Mountain National Park. Visiting the national parks is also a favorite part of these trips for us. We stopped to look at a scenic overlook, and we were able to watch a herd of elk move out of the trees and up the hillside. Later we saw some large bull elk, but I didn't get very good pictures because we were on the go again.

We enjoyed taking some time at the Visitor Center near the top of the mountain. They had some unique items in the gift shop. It was kind of windy but nothing like the freezing wind and snow we encountered last year at Glacier National Park. As I said before, today was just a beautiful day, a really nice ride.

We left the park and then passed through Estes Park. I think I would like to spend more time there some day. It looks like an interesting place. Britt actually knows someone who lives there, and we hoped to visit him, but we weren't able to contact him.

The further down from the mountain we came the hotter we got. By the time we reached our motel in Boulder we had to unstick ourselves from the bike. While we were happy to be done with riding, we were hungry, ready to get something to eat.

In particular, we wanted to check out Beau Jo's Pizza. Britt especially wanted to try it since it it had been featured on Man vs. Food. Our waiter recommended the Dude Ranch. I have to admit to you, it wasn't my favorite. Loved the crust, but the ranch sauce and the chicken just didn't impress me. The stuffed mushrooms we had for an appetizer made the trip there worth it. Also, the hand-rolled crusts with honey were really the best part of the pizza for me. Britt actually dropped his first piece of pizza in his Pepsi. That was kind of funny. If the taste had been phenomenal, it would have been a tragedy.

On our way back to the motel, we got stuck at a light for almost 5 minutes. It started to rain when we stopped and then we seriously got pelted. We weren't drenched necessarily, but we couldn't help wondering if the light would ever change.

The motel is in a residential area, it's pretty old and doesn't include breakfast, but at least we are all in the same motel this time. And tomorrow is going to be another lovely ride.

By the way, that first picture was part of my breakfast, at a place called Chocolate Soup. A dark chocolate shell covering chocolate cake and raspberry mousse. It was YUMMY! And Britt even let me have some.

Sorry, Becky. I don't think it would have traveled well.

1 comment:

Nan said...

Ugh, did I really say herd of deer? I can't edit it from here. As you can tell from the pic and the rest of the post, it was a herd of ELK! Duh!