ESTES PARK

Since this vacation town has a sweet spot in our story we want to make the trip up the canyon a tradition.  This year we drove up after Baby Girls Brunch-Birthday-Bash.  Our goal was to find a few spots to take pictures every time we visit.  I think we did just that.  Let’s just hope the water wheel and park bench stick around for a few more years.

It was a beautiful day, except for the smoke.
This is the view of the High Park fire from Estes Park.
We thought we were escaping the smoke, as this was traveling to Fort Collins. 

But there was also a fire on the west side of Estes Park.  We followed some brush trucks up the canyon and entered an over crowed (Scandinavian Festival–who knew?), slightly on edge community.  The police and fire workers did a great job controlling congestion and people as we waited for words like containment and evacuation.  In the meantime we watched fearless pilots zoom between Lake Estes and the fire outside Rocky Mountain National Park (info on fire here).

Maybe next June we can enjoy Estes Park without large-orange-emergency-helicopters.  We’re 2 for 2 — although it was exciting to watch this time.

• • •

I take a ton of pictures.  I struggle to unload them off the camera or my phone.  My goal is to post one picture and at least one word each week.  So at the end of the year I have 52 edited pictures and a few words to remind us what we savored.  Here’s to adding some structure to this new life.