Day 6

We are having a super fantastic time at the cabin.  The drinking utensils are ginormous, but not so ginormous as Jacob originally thought.  As it turns out, he had a glass of mountain dew out of a flower vase.  That provided a good laugh.

Today, we are going ATVing!  I'm super excited, as our family hasn't done anything like that ever.  (A quick aside, the Pole Position high score has gone back to me.  Not sure how long this will last; the competition is getting tight.  Addendum: Jacob has reclaimed it as of right now.  We shall see what happens in the next few hours.)

We did a short hike to Moraine Park where we enjoyed the enormous rapids and a good view of the mountains, and while we were there, a nice man offered to take our picture.  Turns out, his family is from Seymour, TN: he was wearing a fire-station volunteer sweater.  It's a small world.

Well...we drove out to go ATVing and as it turns out, the person who rented the ATV before us crashed it into a tree, so we didn't get to take out out.  So, instead, we decided to go to the Donut Haus, a super

famous donut shop.  As it turns out, they had already closed.  Just isn't our day, apparently.  As you can see, Jacob isn't very happy about all of it.




Despite the momentary set-backs, we had a good rest of the day.  From the ATV rental place, we found a beautifully picturesque Catholic chapel built on a huge rock at the base of the mountain.  It was difficult to tell where rock ended and church began, and the view was fantastic.







From there we headed back towards our cabin and decided to hit up the Rocky Mountain National Park and just explore.  What we saw there ranks in the top 5 most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen, up there with the Grand Canyon and the Canadian Wilderness.  The area we spent the most time in was a valley completely surrounded by huge snow-covered mountains.  Through the valley snaked a deep-blue stream that looked as if it hadn't been there long: the bed of it was just bent-over grass, and there was no river bank.  I have a bit of trouble writing about it because I can't find the words to describe what I saw there.

Jacob and I have been aching to climb some good rocks ever since we found out that essentially everything is restricted at Garden of the Gods, so we found a small path leading up to a huge outcropping of rock, and climbed all the way to the top.  The view from up there was incredible, and we satisfied ourselves, for the time being, with such huge rocks.  ;)




After exploring a good bit of that area of the park, we all headed back to downtown Estes where we did a bit of souvenir shopping.  All the kids bought a hoodie (Jen opted for a tshirt), and we tried out some super-
killer hot sauce in an espresso shop (weird combo, I think), and I found this pretty neat picture that I know a lot of people will appreciate: the Lord blessing mankind with coffee.



We've seen probably 50ish elk since we've been here, and tonight hasn't been an exception.  We saw a ton on the way home again, and got a few more fantastic pictures.  Tomorrow we're planning on going to a gorgeous lake that everyone has recommended, as well as visiting Coffee on the Rocks (a superb coffee shop), and maybe we'll get to that donut shop.  We shall see.

Goodnight from Estes Park, CO!