Monday.
We started out through the Park, heading over the mountains on Trail Ridge Road – the highest longest paved road in America. I did not enjoy this part of the trip – the sheer drop-offs two feet from the van make my stomach funny. I found that I do much better if I stay in the back and keep my mind on other things, like blogging or reading RMNP literature. But I don’t have many px of straight-down sheer cliffs because the kids never took any. I took this one when we stopped.
Top of the road.
View from the Visitor’s Center.
From there we saw a herd of elk waayyy in the distance, and we also saw three mule deer pretty close to the Visitor’s Center. We next stopped to do a half mile Tundra Communities Trail and saw lots of these fat lazy marmots basking in the sun.
Also many cute picas. (pie-ku)
Jacob is looking at a map which points to various places with mileage.
On the way up, jackets were shed as the exercise kept us warm. At the top, however, it was really cold and windy! This is the highest paved trail in the park – there are many other higher mountains, but they are out of our reach at this point. We were surprised how we had trouble breathing – it took a little while before we acclimated to the thin air.
Beautiful.
After this walk, Ben got a headache which was so bad he puked 
The trail paralleled the Big Thompson River.
Arch Rock.
At the goal – The Pool.
Snack, then we headed back to beat the rain! We set a pretty good pace, and it never did more than drizzle a bit, and I was very glad for that! The idea of eleven soaking wet people in the van didn’t thrill me much!
We saw lots of beaver evidence.
This rockslide was very steep although in this picture it could almost be flat. Kids had fun climbing.
We stopped at this portion of the river so Levi could fish and kids could wade and play.
Looking back where we came from.
Ben’s headache returned (with another puke too
He slept most of the way home and felt much better.
It was really cool back at the cabin, and we could tell it had rained. Levi ventured out to fish again, but the rest of us stayed in the cabin for the evening.
Girls got the loft tonight!
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