The summer after my freshman year in college my family took a road trip to the Colorado Rockies in early May. We drove 35 hours from Maryland to Denver, CO with a few stops along the way.
Road Trip!
We stopped off in Columbus, OH. We stayed for a few days to tour the zoo. Honestly, I wasn’t impressed by the zoo (although it is famous) but the people were great. I like Ohioans for their friendly but not overly friendly attitudes. It’s the good part of the midwest.
After Ohio we made our way to St. Louis, MO. We have family that lives in the area and we were lucky enough
to visit them for a few days before going on to Colorado. My dad’s family took us all over the city before we headed to another part of MO to stay with my dad’s brother and see his grandkids. Aren’t family reunions nice? Sometimes? Well, they are for us! We enjoy getting together and talking about old memories while making new ones. Both sets of my grandparents are dead so any memories our parents have of them the kids cling to. It’s nice to know where your roots are.
From Missouri we headed across the great state of Kansas. 
Seriously, this state is rather dull. 15 hours across the place and I saw nothing but prairie. Beautiful honestly, but I couldn’t do the drive again. We saw old sod houses in the middle of nowhere, tumbleweeds blowing across the highway, prairie grass on fire, and two tornados. Ok, we didn’t see the tornados per se, but we had to outrun them twice knowing they were close by. We saw a bunch of storm chasers heading towards them though, which was neat. It was hot out there and the climate was perfect for tornados!
Once we got into Colorado the weather changed. It went from 84 degrees to 25 degrees! It started to snow! When we got to our hotel in Denver I jumped out of the car in flip flops. People stared at me until I changed into my warm Ugg boots.
The next day we went up in the mountains. What a drive. I’ve never done anything like it. I thought the mountains in New York state were big but compared to the Rockies they’re little hills! We climbed rocks and took photos. We saw wildlife in their habitat munching on the thawing ground. We couldn’t hike too far for the simple reason that most of the trails were under 9 feet of snow!
We found a little town called Estes Park towards the base of the mountain. It was so quaint and just a lovely place to be during the day! So many pretty antique shops and interior decorating stores! Lots of adorable clothing stores as well as many yummy places to eat. There was also a small river that ran behind all the shops and we got coffee and cocoa from the local Starbucks to drink while taking a break from the day.
On the drive back home we stopped one last time to see our family before heading back. It was one of those vacations where absolutely nothing was expected but that’s what made it exciting. Memories are what life is made of.
Enjoy the photos!
~Liz
WITTY 'N' PRETTY 
One thing kind of cool is that there is a hotel in Estes Park that was used as the setting for the movie “The Shining”.
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that’s neat!
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We spend a couple of days in Estes Park a few months ago – lovely quaint place. We really enjoyed it. Did you come across any sunflower fields in KS? We have lots of those, too! 🙂 Thanks for checking out my blog!
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I never saw the sunflower fields! Darn!
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I’m heading out there next week! What is the one thing that you think everyone should see or do?
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Hmm… that’s a tough one! Estes Park was wonderful but I would say stopping at all the overlooks in the national park is worth it! We have the best pictures from that. There’s also a lake there that is crystal clear and the walk there is wonderful. Ask at a ranger station what the name of it is because I can’t remember. If it helps, the photo of my family and I together is at that lake. Have fun!
-Liz
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Great, thank you!
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Beautiful landscapes!
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Thank you! It was lovely!
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