Photos from the road: Rocky Mountain NP
Part 2 of 2 from a road trip through Canyonlands, Arches, and Rocky Mountain National Park
Hey! Thanks for reading. We just got back from another weeklong trip in Mexico City and I’m working on a National Parks print series! So check your inbox for the next few weeks for prints from Cypress and (new) friends 🖋️☕️
We left the last issue in Arches National Park and 101°F weather; Meghan and I escaped the heat with a hotel in Moab, UT for the night. What seemed like an excuse for a shower and air conditioning turned into coffee, margaritas, catching the Stanley Cup final in a bar, buying a cowboy hat, and finding a local printmaker who Cypress may one day get the chance to partner with.
Gigi Perkins spends her time working on the river and making prints. Her reduction woodcuts capture the light and secondary colors of these canyons in beautiful, startling accuracy.
If you get a chance to visit Moab, be sure to check out Red Rock Bakery and Cafe for a lifesaving bagel sandwich and the best collection of local artists we found in the town.
Following the Colorado River
There’s a small turn off in Moab that takes you 44.6 miles around the southeast border of Arches National Park. Utah State Route 128 has been deemed the Upper Colorado River Scenic Byway. It takes you along sixth-longest natural rock span in the United States and through horse ranches, famous western movie locations, and a ghost town. It’s the perfect way to keep a road trip slow.
We found a winery in Grand Junction, Co
Apparently Colorado has a bustling wine region.
One night in Moab, Meghan and I stop into a bar to watch Florida win the Stanley Cup finals (👎). While I’m tossing back tequila, the classier half of us was perusing the wine list. Meghan spots a local Moab wine—this is unexpected enough that she then searches “winery” on Google Maps to see if there’s a vineyard or winery in Utah that we didn’t know about. There wasn’t. Instead, Maps zooms out and shows us a grouping of 30 wineries in Grand Junction, CO. We were… surprised.
And then we queued up our next stop.
Colorado is desert and mountains and not near the ocean. There’s no maritime wind. It’s not a ‘known’ wine region.
But as it turns out, Grand Junction is home to a bustling set of peach orchards. The western cliffs of the Grand Mesa create a perfect rain shadow to protect the crops. And with the Uncompahgre Plateau just south west, there’s a surprise valley that captures the hot air of the desert (which grapes love). And of course, natural irrigation and cool mountain breezes come screaming through the Colorado River canyon straight from the Rockies. It’s like a winemakers dream—precisely where no one would expect.
Bookcliff Vineyards is worth a stop. It was quaint and green. It was quiet. And we paid $10 for a wine tasting flight and walked away with a half case of wine that were all around $20 a bottle.
Rocky Mountain National Park
West entrance, from Grand Lake
Here comes the rain. Every day. 2pm-5pm.
It was so consistent that I proclaimed “this is as reliable as summer storms in Louisiana” loud enough for another camper to overhear and ask “Wait are you Cajun?!”
Meghan says we find each other no matter where we go.
We arrived in Rocky Mountain National Park via Grand Lake, CO, a lovely mountain town dedicated to their sports and outdoors. We slept in Timber Creek Campground. It was fitting that we sleep again in a tight little forrest grouping along the Colorado River—the headlands of the same river we had been following.
The views are unreal. The weather is ever changing. And each day, along the same 50 miles of road we’d drive morning and night, a different perspective on the park was out on display:
These elk stopped along the road for a photoshoot (and what you can’t see is a calf hiding in the bushes centered in this shot). A marmot followed us around in the tundra. A tagged moose ran through our campsite while we were eating dinner. The fauna alone in Rocky Mountain NP was unlike anything I have experienced in a National Park. We were quiet and unobtrusive—but these animals are so relaxed in the mountains that they wander around fully aware that this is their turf.
Everywhere you look, it’s alpine lake after alpine lake. Glacier carved mountain peak after granite tipped mountain peak.
It’s hard to capture in the sense that each photo looks similar after you get home, but you want to remember every corner of every stop for the rest of your life.
And we had just hit the summer solstice, by the way. All of that snow you’re seeing makes up 8 different glaciers and 20+ perennial snow patches. At one point, Meghan and I had to hike across an ice patch to reach an alpine lake.
Bear Lake Road
On the last day, we secured an unexpected permit for Bear Lake Road. Meghan and I had been discussing how to get over to Bear Lake while in a grocery store line when the person in front of us overheard us, turned around, and helped us figure it out on the spot. Apparently, she had worked in the park for a few years and knew the tricks to getting a ticket that otherwise takes months of planning.
So if you go, plan ahead better than I do 😉
We made it to the Bear Lake Trailhead, found a parking spot with dumb luck, and set out for ~9 miles of hiking and ~1,800 of elevation gain. The goal was to hit 4 alpine lakes and as many waterfalls as we could hear in the distance.
Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain house Tyndall Glacier, which can be seen just barely through the storm that was forming above our heads as we hiked. After hiking up to Nymph Lake and running across a 10 yard ice patch (like the seasoned, ski ready vets we are), we decided to keep going up to Emerald Lake to get a closer view.
From Emerald Lake, we descended back down the mountain past waterfalls and creeks. We chatted with tourists from Texas who were there just to fish cutthroat trout—a protected species of trout with unique sub-species that are only found in these lakes and are being repopulated as we speak. And we convinced a woman who was only 700ft from the peak of a trail that pushing through to see Alberta Falls was worth it.
After a week in the woods, we rounded the trip off with a weekend in Denver with my sister and brother in law. We hit the Coors brewery, the Stranahan's Whiskey Distillery, went to a Morgan Wallen concert in Mile High Stadium, shopped for skis, and took our hangover meal from a greasy diner.
But the real highlight? Finding boudin kolaches in the Buc-ees just north of Denver, CO.
Thanks for reading. Stick around for more stories and prints!
See you again soon 🏔️