MONDAY, August 18

Too bad the Quilters Quest in Craig is closed on Mondays or we could have stopped in on our way out of town. Instead we cruised to Steamboat Springs, where I saw my first fence made from skis.  We wandered the shops (got a pretty tie-dyed hot springs dress - with pockets!) and had a very mediocre  meal.  Despite having seen countless signs (like Wall Drug's advertising) ever since leaving Vernal, Utah, we skipped going into the FM Light store. And although we hoped to find a snowboard bag for Alex here in Colorado that's turning out to be harder than expected.  But everywhere we went today I kept getting compliments on my comfy yellow dress, so many that Tom commented on the comments.

Driving over Rabbit Ears Pass (9,426) we saw lots of wildflowers - and sadly LOTS of dead trees (from bark beetles?) I spotted a moose in a lake and Tom tried to stop - but just couldn't quite make it so no picture.

The topography changed dramatically when we reached Hot Sulphur Springs.  Then it was up, up, up on the drive through the Rocky Mountain National Park over the Continental Divide.  There was quite a traffic jam on that narrow road when folks stopped to see a bull elk just off the road to the right, and then another one off to the left (trying to shed his antlers?) The vistas are expansive, but diminished somewhat by the hillsides of dead trees. Cold at the top, especially when it started to rain - but did find a really pretty, really lightweight t-shirt with watercolor moose at the gift shop.  There's a fair amount of snow still left up above the timberline, even at the end of the summer.  At one viewpoint there was a trio of bighorn sheep practically posing for the tourists. On the way down there was another traffic jam  because of all the cars stopped for a herd of cow elk crossing the road.

After a brief stop in Estes Park at a rock shop/museum and a wave at the Stanley Hotel (where Tom worked briefly many years ago until Winter hit) we got off the beaten path.  We saw a sign Moose - next 20 miles but we weren't lucky enough to see one.  Since so many of the 'towns' we've been passing through haven't had any services, we were thinking maybe we should have eaten dinner before leaving Estes Park.  So when we came to the Millsite Inn (in the middle of nowhere) we figured we'd better eat.  But because we stopped, by the time we got to Nederland, site of the (in)famous Frozen Dead Man Festival, everything had just closed.  So we drove on.  Pretty canyon, so imagine my surprise when we got to Black Hawk, which was full of neon signs and casinos!  Once we were through there the canyon turned pristine again.  Sadly by then it was getting dark and we couldn't see as much as we would have liked.

We were heading to Golden in order to do the quilt museum tomorrow.  But the signage at the intersection of 3 highways (where Golden shows up on our map) did not include Golden.  Long story short, we had to make a quick decision in the dark and ended up on I-70 into Denver.  We found a motel that did not want our first-born, and at 9:00 are in for the evening.