Day 12 - Southwest National Parks Adventure

10/05/2025

This morning we drove the Rimrock Drive out of Colorado National Memorial and headed toward the Rocky Mountains. We enjoyed our visit at the Memorial (and don’t know why it’s not a Park), we’d love to spend more time there and check out some of the hiking trails.

The highway north followed the Colorado River and the scenery was spectacular. We stopped in Vail, Colorado for lunch and a walk. Vail is very fancy and would be a fun place for a winter vacation.

As we continued toward Rocky Mountain National Park we noticed the clouds thickened in the north. We checked the forecast for Estes Park, where we planned to stop for the night, and it looked like the rain would hold off until after our arrival. When we got to the entrance of the park there was a sign stating that the road over the mountains to Estes Park was closed! We checked Google maps and it looked open, we ask Google, Google said it was open.

We continued on into the park. As we approached the entry gate we realized there was actually a ranger in the little ranger house (the entry gates at the other parks have not been manned since the shutdown started). The ranger informed us that the road was in fact closed, that it had snowed overnight and they were expecting more snow.

We were terribly disappointed, but also thankful the ranger was there to protect us from driving into a potentially very dangerous situation. We thanked him and hope he gets paid for doing a very important and challenging job, then turned around, retraced our steps, and headed toward Denver. We canceled our stay in Estes Park and are homeward bound. When we saw snow flakes, I told Andy to drive faster. Staying at a Walmart in Ogallala, NE tonight.

As much as we’d like to grumble about the weather ruining our scenic drive through the park and cutting our trip a bit short, we had beautiful weather for the rest of the trip and are ready to get home anyway.