Estes Park With Friends as Guides

At Elk Meadow RV Campground, Estes Park, Colorado...

We have spent most of the week here at Estes Park, enjoying the incredible high mountain weather with daytime temperatures in the seventies and needing to turn on some heat on the chilly mornings. When we see the reports of triple-digit temperatures in Texas, it seems far away and unreal. However, when we return there at the end of summer, it will still be hot and all too real, I'm afraid. We wouldn't think of going back so soon, but we need to make our way to Tennessee and points east, to fulfill our autumn plans. Before we do that, we need to make our semiannual appearances at the offices of various medical professionals in the Houston area. This will facilitate the prescription renewals of the chemicals that largely hold our aging carcasses together.

While enjoying the cool mountain climate here, we have been in the company of Glenn and Joy, fellow Phaeton owners whom we met recently at Colorado Springs. We find it amazing that we would run into a couple who are so simpatico, sharing as they do my deep roots in the beautiful forested hills of far east Texas. (We grew up only about 75 miles apart.) We find that our backgrounds are remarkably similar, having many of the same family customs and preferences, borne from our mutual rural heritage.

Joy and Glenn

Glenn and Joy have spent many summers in Estes Park, so we have had the unexpected good fortune to enjoy their role as tour guides, a favor they seem to delight in performing for us. Had it not been for our daily pilgrimages together around the area, we would have missed some very interesting and beautiful parts of this picturesque area. We traveled into Rocky Mountain National Park several times, seeing new sights and learning more about the beautiful area each time. Aside from an ascent to the highest point in the park at 11,000 feet, we saw numerous places we hadn't seen before, including these scenes from near the beautiful, crystal-clear waters of Bear Lake:

Sandy, Joy and Glenn at the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of RMNP

We also enjoyed a very entertaining western show at the Lazy B Chuckwagon in Estes Park. This was a talented troupe who were great musicians and who kept us laughing throughout:

Our good time was well worth the small price for the dinner and show, and we highly recommend it if you are in the area.

This post serves as a nice follow-on to the previous one, where I discussed friendships, old and new. We know that Joy and Glenn, while actually new friends, are already forever ones. And so it goes with this lifestyle. That's why we always close our posts with these thoughts:

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I don't appreciate it each day as I should.

You don't stop playing when you get old; you get old when you stop playing.