Rocky Mountain National Park

Don't you touch my bone now...

Silly puppy

This morning we drove about 5 hours to Rocky Mountain National Park. We bought an "America the Beautiful" pass to all the National Parks for a year! Since we'll be living so close to Yosemite and a few others anyways. The park was absolutely breathtaking. It was a little freaky driving along all those windy roads with nothing but a cliff to your death on one side, but still well worth it. Samson still did excellent in the car, without sedatives, and even finally went to the bathroom this morning, and then tonight too! It was a little disappointing, however, because there were a lot of trails that we couldn't go on because of him. We read that you could only have pets on paved trails and walkways, but that wasn't even true. Oh well. We'll have to come again sometime without him. He could still get out at most lookouts with us. The mountains were amazing, and the rocks along the cliffs were very cool too (I know why they call them the Rockies!), and we even saw a very little bit of wildlife: some elk, a chipmunk, and a golden mantled ground squirrel (looks like a giant chipmunk).

Sitting on a bear at the visitor center

Samson wanted to say hi too

See... rocky...

Love it!

Elk, these are the tourist elk according to a man on the trail.

We hit the town of Estes Park tonight to find some dinner. It's such a quaint little mountain town, I love it! We walked down this sort of main strip with shops and food places with Samson (because we are not allowed to leave him at the hotel). We found this local little extra greasy burger place called Penelope's, and sat at a table outside with Samson. It was so funny walking down the street (which was mostly full of tourists) with him and having everyone look and point at the "cute little puppy!" That's right, my puppy is the cutest.