Memorial Day Weekend - Day 3 - Absolutely Horrible

On Memorial Day, we packed up and headed back to Grand Lake once again. The previous day, we saw a flyer that said there was a Small Town Memorial Day Parade at 10:00 a.m. . . . what better way to spend Memorial Day than by watching a parade? We also wanted to drive home through Estes Park, and were banking on the fact that Trail Ridge Road would be open.

When we got to Grand Lake, we were surprised that there were cars parked on the road . . . nothing was blocked off for the parade! We parked by the park so the kids could play while we waited for 10:00 to roll around . . . Hubby went to the information booth and asked about the parade. We found out why the street wasn’t blocked off . . . because you can do this:

How awesome to be able to sit in the back of the car to watch this pass by:

A huge shout out and thank you to all of our veterans and active military! We watched an awesome small town parade, complete with candy, Smokey Bear, horses, political campaigns, and fire trucks before we took our chance and headed back up Trail Ridge Road to see if it was open. The Ranger said it should open within the hour - YAY! With a little while before it opened, we stopped to take in this:

A huge herd of elk off in the meadow - apparently they had stuck around for a couple days. Then we ran into the line of cars waiting for the road to open . . . and the kids did this:

Of course they took the opportunity to run around in the road when Hubby said they could! It didn’t take an hour for the road to open - yay! They’d cleared all the ice and we were off . . . almost literally . . .

Yes, it really does drop off the edge to absolutely nowhere . . . no there are no guardrails. Yes it sucked when you had to pass an RV or pickup pulling a boat when they didn’t want to stay on their own side of the road. We also go to drive through this:

Of course it’s neat when you drive through a wall of snow that is taller than your car! Notice that the snow isn’t even close to the top of the plow sticks . . . that’s because the snow has been melting each day in the hot sun, and running down the road, and freezing overnight, creating an ice rink - which is the reason the road is closed part of every day - it’s too slippery until the plows can get out and clear the road of ice. I, for one, thank them. No way I want to drive on icy roads with those huge drop offs!

On our way to Estes Park, we stopped so Princess could enjoy this view:

Fine - she’s actually watching a marmot. And we didn’t stop for the view - we stopped so Hubby could use the bathroom. But I enjoyed the view! Then we did a little climbing here:

. . . and here . . .

. . . so we could get here . . .

. . . Many Parks Curve . . . the exact location and boulder where Hubby proposed to me on March 18, 1995. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Off to Estes Park for lunch at the always yummylicious Oskar Blues, then we hit the road for the final push home.

All in all, a terrible, horrible, crappy Memorial Day Weekend :-) How about you? Did you have fun?