I woke up to a cloud filled sky, so I just kind of hung around camp for awhile before I made up my mind to go.  I headed into the park planning to go on a fairly long hike, but as I got closer to the trailhead, the clouds never seemed to clear.

Rather than having to hike in the rain, I decided to drive the Trail Ridge Road up to the Alpine Visitor Center, which is at the midpoint of this road .  This is the same road I’ll be taking tomorrow on the way to Utah, so I figured I would save time by getting some of the photo stops in today.  The Alpine visitor center is situated at 11,796 feet above sea level which makes it the highest visitor center in the entire National Park System.

It was a nice cool morning, so I drove with the top down.  The temperature drops rapidly as you ascend so I had to put a sweatshirt on about halfway up.  I made a few stops along the way and took lots of pictures.  It was cloudy so the lighting wasn’t great, but I still got some good shots.

At the visitor center is a short hike up to a scenic viewpoint at just over 12,000 feet.  I hiked up there only to have the batteries in my camera run out – and wouldn’t you know this was the time I left everything in the car.  Oh well, I went back down to the visitor center, had some lunch, grabbed new batteries and headed back up.

As I was on my way back up, I noticed lots of rain cells over various peaks and one that appeared to be headed my direction.  I hustled up to the top, snapped a few pictures and got back down as fast as I could.  I couldn’t believe I was passing people going up – most with no rain gear whatsoever, and it was only about 55 degrees as well.

I made it into the visitor center just in time to miss the downpour and hail and luckily stayed dry.  I hung out there for about an hour waiting for the rain to let up and then listening to a ranger talk about lightning – very appropriate topic!  He also explained that the afternoon thunderstorms were more or less a daily occurrence during the summer due to the morning heating of the east and south faces of the mountains – now I find this out!

I made it back to my campsite about 3:30 and decided to take in a movie – Pirates of the Caribbean as I didn’t feel like hanging out at the campsite.  The movie was pretty good, I’ll definitely see the next one, just to know how things wrap up.  As I walked out of the movie there was a huge thunderstorm blowing through, so I hung out in the lobby for about a half hour waiting for it to let up – no sense going back to the campsite just yet.  Afterwards, there was a tremendous double rainbow that I snapped a couple of pictures of.  An for about a half hour after the rain stopped, the clouds were making all sorts of spectacular patterns in the sky, got some pictures of those too.

The good news is that through all the rain today, my tent stayed nice and dry – OK there were a few drops that managed to sneak through but they wiped up easily.  I’m looking forward to the next couple of days as I’ll be out on the basin and range area of Colorado, Utah and Nevada which are arid regions.  So I should stay dry at least until I reach Yosemite.

Got up to another beautiful morning today.  I hadn’t actually slept much since the campground is right next to one of the main highways going through Estes Park, oh well the morning was sunny and cool.  By the time I made breakfast and got everything squared away at my campsite it was starting to warm up.

I left about 9 o’clock with the top down.  I entered the park and picked up a map, not really sure where I wanted to go.  I spent about an hour just driving around and taking pictures.  I settled on hiking the Bierstadt Lake trail as it sounded like a nice hike to start things off, only 1.2 miles (one way).  However, what the signs don’t specify is that the first .8 miles is an uphill climb.  It was worth it though, as I was rewarded with some spectacular views along the climb and then lunch next to a beautiful alpine lake.

By the time I got back to my car it was really warm, but I put the top down anyway and just went for a drive to the end of the road I was on and then back down to the visitor center.  By the time I came out of there, it was looking like rain and the first drops started as I pulled out of the parking lot.  A nice thundershower quickly became a downpour.  I got back to my campsite and sat in the car until it let up then crawled into the tent for a nap – I’m on vacation remember.  It rained for about 3 hours and then finally stopped and I was able to assess the damage.  Not too bad, just a few things got a bit damp but they’re drying out now.

I think I’ll go find someplace to eat – I don’t feel like dealing with the wetness and it looks like it could rain some more yet this evening anyway.