Day 11: Hot Springs to Estes Park, CO

Even though we wouldn't be arriving at our new apartment today, it still felt like the last day of our trip. We woke up early and went back into town at 7ish. Lo and behold, we could only find 1 place that was open at that hour, and it appeared that we were the only "outsiders" eating at the time. Everyone else seemed to know each other.

But what did we care, our total bill was: $8.06. Coffee, toast, 1 scrambled egg, 2 scrambed eggs, oatmeal, 1 pancake, 1 blueberry muffin. And oh, the pancake was 9 or 10 inches across. Ridiculous.

We immediately drove north 5 or 10 miles to Wind Cave State Park for a tour of Wind Cave, the 4th longest cave in the world (129 miles of explored passageways). The 3rd largest is right nearby, and the largest is in Kentucky I believe.

To my delight, there was a giant display about the black footed ferret. This awesome creature of the wild was thought to be extinct in the late 1970's, but a group was discovered and many have been bred in captivity. Long story short, they are making a comeback, and primarily live in prairie dog colonies in South Dakota and Wyoming (including this very state park!). Not sure how that works exactly since 90% of their diet is prairie dogs, but the information was a little fuzzy regarding that. I didn't see any in the wild (they are nocturnal), but I can assure you they are super cute.

Anyway, we were on the first tour of the morning, and well, as expected, it was pretty dark in there so these videos may not be worth much:



Sorry about the quiet audio, it was like a library in there! It's me saying something to the effect of: "This is boxwork. 90% of the worlds boxwork is inside this cave. It's formed when calcite seeps into the cracks in limestone, and then the limestone is slowly eroded away from acid in the water (it's not actually a wet cave, but it's just groundwater seeping through) leaving the calcite."



The cave was fairly small and narrow for the most part, with occasionally larger rooms like the one shown above. They have a 4 hour tour where you have headlamps and kneepads and you get to crawl around without floodlights placed every few feet, but sadly we didn't have time for that. So the tour we were on was basically along concrete steps and a pathway, taking away some of the experience. We'll definitely do the other next time we are there!

All and all, definitely worth it, but sadly you take an elevator to get out! :-(

We were in Wyoming before you knew it (problem with the Welcome to Wyoming video). We stopped for lunch in Cheyenne. Not much to say about that. Cute, tiny downtown.

Janet took over the driving duties and led us into our final state...Colorado! Grr...problem with the Colorado video.

I was amazed that we didn't really see the mountains at all in Wyoming, just flatness, but almost as soon as we entered Colorado, we could see the distant Rocky Mountains, beckoning us. A little ahead of schedule, we decided to surprise our friend Kelly in Estes Park. She works at the renowned RiverSong Bed and Breakfast Inn and greeted the door as though we were any other guests...followed by a momentary second or two of computing who we actually were, and then was super surprised and happy to see us!

Coincidentally, our friend Mary from Boston was also visiting her at that very moment:


I forgot to mention the drive into Estes Park from Longmont...completely amazing. Janet and I couldn't stop looking at each other like "this is where we live...!?!?". Steep, mountainous canyon walls on either side of the windy road as it wound alongside the river. And when you get to Estes Park, there is a curtain of giant mountains framing the distant Rocky Mountain National Park with it's snowy covered goodness.

The RiverSong is at the end of a dirt road, alongside a creek. It smells like pine trees. Here is the view from atop the rocks across the street (actually taken the next morning):



The night ended with all of us (including Kelly's bf Christopher and his co-worker Bo) sitting around chatting, eating cheese (some of us), drinking wine (some of us) with the doors and windows open, because well...that's how they do it in Colorado.