End of the Vacation

At the end of the week we drove over Trail Ridge Road which is the highest paved road in the Continental U.S. It rises above the treeline into the alpine tundra. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures of that because it's beautiful, but it's a narrow road with abrupt drop offs and I was driving a minivan full of kids. In the rain. Towing a camper. Allie only screamed once or twice.

My parents rented a cabin at the YMCA camp in Estes Park. It's a good thing the cabin has a big table.

Honestly we didn't do much while we were there but laze about the cabin. Allie and I did take one long hike. Here is a view from the trail.

I didn't shave for the entire vacation. I was starting to look like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Gandalf.

Finally we started back home. We camped for the last time in Clayton Lake State Park in northeast New Mexico. Bleak but beautiful.

Clayton Lake has a large number of dinosaur footprint so we took a hike to find them. The dinosaur prints didn't look like much to our untrained eyes but on the hike we saw these prints on the trail.

I'm no tracker but even I can see there are no claw prints, which makes these feline. And they were between an inch and a half and two inches in diameter which is waaaay too big for a domestic cat. I guess it's a bobcat print.

While driving on I45 north of Centerville, Texas I looked up and saw something I've wanted to see my entire life - a Swallow-tailed kite. No, I didn't take this picture. It's one I found on the internet.

It was a wonderful vacation and the person who made it possible was Allie. She is cook, nurse, quartermaster, planner, navigator, artist, adventurer, drier of tears and wiper of noses, can find any lost object by closing her eyes and concentrating, and yes, she tie-dyed this shirt. Without her Clan Scott falls apart very quickly. Plus she laughs at my jokes.

I love you, Allie!