Sunday 17 June Cont'd

We arrived at The Rodeway Inn (now The Rocky Mountain Hotel) just after 3pm. Check in was 4pm but they had a room ready. As we were unloading the car Les noticed a couple taking photos at the end of the block. Walking down we found two young elk grazing on the grass and trees around the motel. The desk clerk later showed us a picture of a whole herd in the car park so obviously they’re quite common.

We’ve used the time in hand not only to download the photos as usual but also to empty the car and start getting ready for tomorrow when we have to leave the hotel in ‘flight mode’.Disappointed to find the wifi speed is under 1Mbps. This is something that’s varied wildly throughout the holiday.

Once we’d done all the preparation that we could for tomorrow we had a quick look at Anne’s notes for restaurants. We settled on Claire’s. It appeared to close at 8pm, so we set off straight away and got there at 6pm. It was a very homely place in appearance. The staff were very good. Our ‘server’ was from Uzbekistan, but had spent a year in London at Westminster University as part of his business degree, and was now doing an MBA in America. The food was really good, and they were happy to do Anne’s pasta and vegetables in a different way, avoiding the creamy sauce. Les finished the holiday with a flourish with a bison steak - this was on a par with the Colorado Lamb Chops as the nicest meat of the holiday. In general American steaks are tender and cooked exactly as asked, but lack much flavour.

Back at the motel we watched a couple of BBC programmes that we’d downloaded.

Monday 18 June.

Up around 7.45. Breakfast was quite crowded, and the food was limited to ‘Continental Breakfast’ US-style. I wonder what Americans think when they go to Europe and get a real continental breakfast.

Back in our room Anne finished the miracle of the packing. All relatively easy - Les has bought one pair of lightweight shoes, but other than that we’ve only bought a few small presents. We dumped quite a lot of almost-empty toiletries, and in the end both cases were several kilos under the limit (although quite full). We also left behind our coolbox, quite a bit of food, and the glass cleaner that we've been using on the car windscreen (so we don't get marks on the photos we take from the passenger seat). The front desk said that the cleaners regard this as a perk.

We set off around 9.30 and drove back into the town. We parked and walked the whole length of the town centre looking in the shops. This really is an attractive town, even though it’s obviously highly-geared to visitors to the National Park. It's ashame that we couldn't have longer here - but you could say that about most places we've been. We were taken by the chocolate-covered bacon. Walking back on the opposite side of the street we started to look for coffee. The only shop we found (which doubled as a bookshop and stationers) had a long queue. Looking around we saw a Subway, and bought some rolls and fruit juice for lunch. Having put these in the car we then walked all the way along the street again to a small coffee shop. Time was getting slightly tight so we bought take-away coffees. Les then decided to use the restroom and started to panic when he couldn’t get out of the cubicle. Eventually it turned out that the door was jammed against the frame, rather than the lock being faulty.

We decided to stick with our plan of going south on CO 7 - a scenic route. A few miles down there were roadworks with shuttle working and we had to wait about 5 minutes. From here the route was wonderful, going up to about 8,000ft and then slowly down for miles and miles, much of it alongside a river that was quite full after yesterday’s rain. Unfortunately, there were almost no places to pull off for photos. At one point the geology changed abruptly from a steep narrow gorge of yellow rocks to a wider valley of red rocks. In the valley floor we came across a parking/picnic area at Hall’s Ranch. We stopped, used the restrooms and ate our lunch.

The drive from there soon bought us to Lyons, where we met the US 36 and filled the car, and then on to the I-25. We got to the car rental return about 2.15 and were in the airport by 2.30 as we’d hoped to be. Check-in was empty and very quick, but there was a bit of a queue for security.

Once through we got the shuttle train to B gates. Les sat and typed the diary while Anne had a look round the shops.

An uneventful flight back to the UK, and then a drive back from Heathrow to Dorset to start sorting out our memories.