Day 147 – August 4 – Estes Park, Colorado

We were right on the state line of Wyoming and Colorado at the Terry Bison Ranch, so we decided to drive to Estes Park, Colorado to see how the town was doing after the so called 500 year flood of last September (9/11/13 was the date).  We drove highway 34 through Big Thompson Canyon, as we have done many times before. It was amazing to see how the flood wiped out some buildings and others seemed to be untouched.

This was a bridge to a house on the other side of the river - both are gone

The Big Thompson River runs through a deep canyon with shear walls at some points.  There have always been scattered homes, cabins, and businesses located along the river.  The road was completely washed away in several places during the flood, but they have what they call a temporary road in place.

The picture above is a close up of the bathroom, this was a park.  The river is running just outside the bathroom door

One very cool thing we saw was some kind of mountain goat or sheep, I really don’t know what they are but they were right on the side of the road.

Some of the homes/cabins have been rebuilt while others remain empty and are starting to look shabby.

We noticed the backside of the dam in Estes Park looked like it had new stones, like Lake Estes overflowed the dam during the flood. 

We drove out to see the little rock Catholic Church built on a rock (or group of rocks) near Meeker Park.  I have included a photo from a couple of years ago that we took before the floodwaters flowed through the area.

This photo was taken on a trip to Estes Park in 2012

The trees are gone along with soil - there is just a small stream that runs in front of the church that did all the damage

We ate lunch in a Forest Service picnic area and returned to Cheyenne by the same route.  About 5 miles from the state line the wind started blowing from the left side.  I had to turn the steering wheel into the wind to keep the camper on the road and straight.  We started to get heavy rain just before Cheyenne, but it stopped as we approached interstate 80.  We turned east on I-80 and decided to try to get a couple more hours of driving in before stopping.

We are currently at the world headquarters for Cabela's in a very nice campground by their store.  We could stay free in the truck and RV parking lot, but decided to stay in the campground, at an electric only site for the night.