Sunday 17 June

Our last full day in the USA - we fly home tomorrow from Denver back to Heathrow. It might be our last trip here as we're not getting any younger - both in our 70s now, and who knows what the future holds at our age.

Up around 7.30am. Breakfast in room trying to use up everything we’d bought. It had obviously rained quite heavily through the night and was still raining lightly occasionally. Got everything into the car the easy way for the last time and were away by around 9.15am.

As we were leaving a Sheriff’s Deputy was at the motel, obviously looking for somebody. He didn’t seem terribly rushed so Les had a quick chat with him. He turned out to be really nice and asked us to pass his card to Andy and Rob and ask if they’d like to swap ‘patches’ - we assume this means badges.

Again, today’s drive was fairly straightforward in theory. We stopped first at Windy Gap Wildlife Viewing Area. This is adjacent to a dam and the authority has set up special viewing points to look at the waterfowl. A short way down the road at Rainbow Bay we stopped again. We were just going to take a picture of the lake but a man pointed out to us that just out of sight from where we were, around the bend, was an osprey’s nest on top of a specially provided pole. He told us that he’d been able to take photos of the adults feeding the young. We went along and parked and Les walked towards the nest. No sign of the adults but Les just managed to get some shots of the young birds popping their heads up over the edge of the nest.

We carried on towards Grand Lake but stopped again fairly quickly and Les tried a few shots of an adult osprey that was flying over the lake looking for prey. Got one or two reasonable shots.

A bit misleading going to Grand Lake as we weren’t quite sure whether we’d been through it or not. Eventually we found a sign saying downtown was 4 miles ahead. When we got there it was very busy despite being not long after 10am. Luckily we found a parking space at one end of the town and walked all the way through to the far end. The town is on the lake. The main street is one block back and all the side roads lead down to the lake. The main street has old fashioned wooden boardwalks and virtually all the shops have wooden frontages giving it a very old fashioned feel (in a nice way). It seems to be a mixture of cafes, galleries and craft and souvenir shops. There are several boat rental places and large number of hotels, motels. It’s obviously a very popular spot with both lake and the Rocky Mountain NP close by.

We had a coffee in a small coffee shop at the far end of the main street. We sat at a table on the boardwalk and Les watched the humming birds feeding from feeders while Anne walked to the restrooms.

Back in the car we carried onto the National Park Visitor Centre just up the road. After a short while here we went into the Park proper. We were not very far in before we came across a batch of parked cars so we pulled over and got out. There were a group of three male elk grazing at the bottom of the embankment. We took lots of photos and chatted for quite a time to some Americans.

Back in the car we started the long climb up to the summit. At this point the weather was still good, although it did start to rain after a while. Not much other wildlife. Views from the car were stunning as we climbed but there were not many points where you could take photos. As we approached the summit it got scary as we drove into cloud and rain. Eventually (having missed and had to turn round) we pulled into the Alpine Ridge Visitor Centre. It was raining, windy and down to 6c. We went in and found the cafe which was crowded. We saw two seats at a table for 6 and asked if we could join them. It turned out that it was a Dutch couple and two girls, one Finnish and one German. They were all on the same coach tour. We had an enjoyable time talking to them and of course apologising for Brexit. None of them can understand why we’ve done it.

The drive down the east side and out of the park was quite scary - thick cloud and heavy rain and a very windy road. Fortunately, people seem to drive with their hazard lights on so the safest method as to keep the car in front just in view.

Leaving the park we simply carried onto the motel - The Rodeway Inn in Estes Park.