Vacation Day 9 - Casper, WY to Estes Park, Colorado

Wednesday (July 31) – Trip Day 9 (Casper, WY to Estes Park, Colorado) – More miles today – drive, drive, drive.  Today we drove about 5 hours to get to just outside Rocky Mountain National Park.  The first half of the drive was across southeastern Wyoming.  It is relatively flat to lightly rolling wheat land – not much to look at.  The oil wells that appear here and there are the most notable thing here.   Driving into Colorado we began to see the Rocky Mountains off to the west.  The traffic really picked up from Fort Collins south. The road to Estes Park was absolutely spectacular as we drove up the narrow Big Thompson River valley with high perpendicular cliffs with beautiful rock formations. It is very much like Yosemite.  Estes Park is a large tourist community of over 5000 permanent residents, at an elevation of 7500 feet.  It is Carmel, California, in the Rocky Mountains with hundreds of eclectic shops in a pretty little downtown.  The weather all day was off and on showers but it was nice in the late afternoon and early evening when we went through downtown and out to eat.
This is the main street in downtown Estes Park.

When we got back to the motel there were tornado warnings – but or an area southeast of Denver whereas we are northeast of Denver.
Clouds to the east at sundown.

 Sunset over the Rockies in Estes Park.

We had to clean out our car as there are warnings here that even in town you should leave no food in your car because of the wild animals (aka – bears!)