Castle Rock CO

Well, after coming over the Rocky Mountains on Rte 70,  Paul has declared that we will not be going over that mountain again.  The elevation got to be over 11,000 ft.  Up and Down for hours.  I didn't realize he was stressing until he said so, and when I was surprised, he said that the throttle was pinned, so we were going as fast as we could, up the hill.  We weren't quite keeping up with the cars, but we did ok.  He said if the truck was ever going to have a problem, thats when it would happen, but miles and miles of up and down, and the engine temperature never changed, so that was good. 

Elevation reduces the horsepower that an engine is capable of, so it makes the steep hills tougher. I was on the lookout for Elk, since they frequent this area and although I haven't seen any yet, I did learn that they put "ramps" on the highway so that if Elk get on the road, they can get back off again.  I also saw for the first time "Chain stations".  In the winter months it is mandatory for trucks to "chain up" before going over the mountain, so there are pulloffs for them to do that.

Once we made it over, we ended a very long day of travel.  Almost 8 hours in the truck, and thats a long day for us.  We made it early enough to meet up with Shad and Amy, our nephew and his wife, for dinner.  We elected to head to Red Robin for dinner since Amy works for the company and none of us was up for cooking!  We had a great dinner with them and then met up again today for more fun.

We all hiked up Devil's Head trail, which leads to the last active fire lookout station on the Colorado mountain range. The view from the top was 100 miles in all directions, which was pretty awesome for me. It was my first good look at the Rocky Mountains.  Being a John Denver fan from my teenage years, I have always wanted to come here and see what he loved about them so much.
           After heading home to regroup, we all went out to dinner again at Red Robin- boy, I could get used to that! We had a great time with Shad and Amy, its really the first chance we have had to spend time with just the two of them and they are really great people. 
Now its on to our next stop, which is a state park just north of Denver, closer to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We may or may not have cell service and internet. I made a bucket list of things we might like to do while we are here.  We'll see what we end up doing.