What an eventful day. This is going to be our last weekend in Colorado for quite some time and we wanted to make sure we did some more sightseeing, but where to go? We finally decided on going back to the Rocky Mountain National Park since it was free National Park weekend. The last time we were there, several inches of snow was on the ground and many of the roads were closed for the winter. Today, more roads were open, but we still could not go all the way through to the other side on HWY 34.
We drove as far as we could on HWY 34 which brought us to Rainbow Curve. The park ranger at the visitor’s center indicated that even though the road beyond Rainbow Curve was closed, we could walk on the road and get past the tree line and into the tundra. Even though the National Park will not allow dogs on the trails, the park ranger indicated that walking the dogs on the road was allowed. We parked the Jeep at Rainbow Curve and headed up the mountain road with the little wiener dogs. The wind was brisk up there at 12,000 foot elevation. We made it up to Ute Trail and headed back. It ended up being about a 3 ½ mile round trip hike.
We wanted to go to Grand Lake, but HWY 34 going through the National Park wouldn’t be opened until the end of May. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t make the drive all the way through the park, but the walk on the virtually abandoned road made up for it. We got there early enough that we were the only walkers on the road until we were almost back to the Jeep. On our way back, a guy stopped us to take pictures of our wiener dogs. Apparently they were quite the sight.
We got back to the Jeep by 11 a.m. where we made ourselves sandwiches for lunch and contemplated our next move. We decided to go ahead and make our way to Grand Lake by going around the mountains since we couldn’t cut through on HWY 34. We drove back to Estes Park and got onto Peak to Peak Highway. We love that drive. Not only did we see elk, but we saw our first moose!
As we were driving, we went through the little town of Nederland. Robert said he was just reading on the Wheeling It Blog about Frozen Dead Guy Days that was held the first weekend in March. We got up the road a bit and decided to forego Grand Lake and turn around and explore Nederland. What a quirky little town. We loved looking in the little shops. I especially loved the Rustic Moose and Off Her Rocker Gifts. There was a railroad car from Buffalo Bill’s show that was now a little ice cream shop. We went into the Visitor’s Center and learned all about Frozen Dead Guy Days, where I had to buy a pint class to add to my collection.
Apparently, back in the late 1980s a Norwegian guy had his grandfather (who died of natural causes), sent to California to a cryonics facility to be preserved until he could be revived. In the 90s, he had his grandfather moved to his eccentric house in Nederland, CO to be kept frozen in his shed. Due to visa issues, the man had to return to Norway, leaving his mother and frozen grandfather behind. His mother reached out the community to help her with her father’s remains. As you can imagine, that provoked quite the reaction and the little town of 1,500 got a ton of publicity over the oddity. It seems that a local man was hired by the family to keep the grandfather on ice. I guess it takes about 1,600 pounds of dry ice a month to keep the guy frozen.
The community decided in 2001 to start their off-beat festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days which draws up to 15,000 people for such events as coffin races, frozen turkey bowling, and a hearse parade. Thanks to the Wheeling It’s blog, we ended up exploring a cute little town that we would have otherwise passed by.
After walking the dogs along the creek that runs through Nederland, we made our way back home to Golden via the Golden Gate Canyon Road. We stopped at Mount Galbraith Park Open Space to have another sandwich. When we left there, the check gauges light came on. The battery wasn’t charging. Luckily we were about 10 miles from home, so we pressed on. We got home and Robert did a little testing and confirmed that the alternator was bad.
O’Reily Auto Parts was only a mile from the RV Park, so we headed there while there was still daylight. Robert took the tools he needed and he changed the alternator right in O’Reily’s parking lot. Even though it was an unexpected repair, it seemed to go without a hitch. We made it home at sunset, got cleaned up and ended our day in the hot-tub followed by a nice ice cream treat.
