Exploring Estes Park, Adventures in Aspen, and Successfully Seeing the Great Sand Dunes

This post is a couple of weeks overdue, but lately I have been travelling so fast it is taking my writing a while to catch up.  So I will continue sharing my Colorado adventures last month and also get you up to speed on this European adventure!

I spent hours along the stream in Estes Park.

Estes Park is home to loads of shops right up my alley, including Inkwell and Brew, a notebook and coffee shop.  I've been to bookstores with coffee shops before, but never a store that exclusively notebooks.  There was also a Christmas store that greeted every customer with, "Merry Christmas!" Another store I loved was the Highlands Music and Minstrel Scottish and Irish store, where I spent quite a bit of time conversing with the worker about her trips to Ireland.  I decided it would be a good idea to buy an autobiography about an American woman who takes up the bagpipes, ends up marry a Scottish bagpiper (that counts as a British musician!), and travelling around the world.  I also decided to play bagpipe music on the car ride back to our lodging.  Luckily,my friend swore she wasn't judging me for either choice!

One of three notebooks I found at Inkwell and Brew.

Estes Park is near Rocky Mountain National Park and the wildlife made sure we noticed their presence.  Right at a street called Elkhorn Road, two giant elk appeared, stopping traffic as they leisurely made their way across the street.

This elk crossed the road right at Elkhorn Lane.

I was in Estes Park for a wedding and it couldn't have been a more beautiful venue or day.

It couldn't have been a more beautiful day for the wedding!

Sunset on the trolley back to Estes Park.

As I said in my last post, I spent quite a bit of time in the car.  The perk of this was the gorgeous scenery like Independence Pass.

This almost reminded me of Iceland!

At the top of Independence Pass is the Continental Divide.  Raindrops that fall on the east side will eventually end up in the Atlantic Ocean, while raindrops that fall to the west will one day emerge in the Pacific Ocean!

Independence Pass is only 2,000 feet lower than Pikes Peak.

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I had visited Aspen before, but had never taken the gondola.  I've skied many times in Colorado, but the landscape is totally different in the summertime. 

The view from the gondola in Aspen.

At the top, I took a free walking tour by ACES, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies.  I took one of their sunset beaver walks a couple of years ago and got to see beavers in action while building their dams.  What this hike lacked in beavers, it made up for in interesting facts.  What looked like just a rusted landfill was, well, exactly that but from when Aspen was in the silver mining era and was much older than I anticipated.

These cans are from the mining era.

Colorado is so photogenic it is hard to take a bad photo.  However, sometimes the wind attempts to foil this.

Don't mind how nonsensical my hair looks in the wind.

We also went to the John Denver song garden, where I met this lovely steam punk Aslan.

I found a steampunk Aslan...

And then crossed a bridge with a lamppost at the end. (Have you ever noticed how strange of a word "lamppost" is?  Doesn't it look strange?)

...and then went to Narnia.

And took a photo by the Narnian lamppost, reminiscent of Oxford.

If there is a Narnian lamppost in the vicinity, I will likely find it.

No trip to Aspen is complete with a stop at the Maroon Bells, Colorado's most photographed mountains.  I had walked around Maroon Lake before, but this time we decided to venture further and take a two hour each-way hike to Crater Lake.

Even standing on a bench, the Maroon Bells still tower over me!

The view from Crater Lake.

We decided to take the free hike directed by ACES and were the only people on our hike so we had our own private guide.  

Crater Lake was worth the two hour hike.

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Once we had returned back to civilization, the next stop was the Aspen Historical Society.  Unfortunately, we got caught outside in a thunderstorm and I did not have any sort of jacket.  I walked in soaking wet and the lady working shouted to the back room, "I have a very wet girl here, do you have a towel she could borrow?"  She returned with a bright yellow towel that I could use for the duration of my visit.  When we were upstairs, I could hear her relaying the towel story to everyone else who entered!

One of Aspen's original chair lifts!

Included in our admission was the Aspen Mining and Ranching Museum, which was set in a historic building.

The mining museum is housed in a historical building.

Though the two are not in the same direction in any way, we left Aspen by 6 AM so that I could finally visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  Let me tell you, it was worth the early wake up call!

Thank you, wind at the Great Sand Dunes for cooperating with my hair.

The high sand dunes did not look like something you'd expect in Colorado and I felt more like I was in the Sahara Desert.  That is, until I turned around and saw the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains.

The contrast of sand dunes and mountains looks otherworldly.

This site is truly otherworldly and one of Colorado's greatest masterpieces.  

From plains to sand dunes to mountains, Colorado has it all.

Since these Coloradan travels, I've visited Pennsylvania, Ontario, Spain, and am currently in France so I have lots of blogging to catch up on!