OFF TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK: We drove about 50 miles south out of South Dakota and into Nebraska and saw miles and miles of “wide open spaces”!!! There were beautiful fields of SUNFLOWERS for as far as you could see in WYOMING.
Before driving to Estes Park, CO we stopped at the Colorado Welcome Center and were told that there was a Scottish Highlands Festival at Estes Park and that literally everything would be booked full! We opted to stay 3 nights at Boyd Lake State Park at Loveland, CO…about 30 miles east of Estes Park. We drove the 30 miles each day up through a deep narrow canyon,
...it was a beautiful drive and we saw BIG HORN SHEEP grazing on someones lawn (of course we would have rather seen them up on one of the mountain sides looking down at us!)
We avoided as much of Estes Park as possible, going directly to Rocky Mountain National Park. The Elk were not hanging out in town or at the Visitor Center where we had seen them previous years. The photo below shows TWO BULL ELK...they seemed to be kind of "testing" each other and we did not get to see any head butting...but we were told as the season goes on things usually get more serious!
They were just beginning to return from the higher summer terrain but we got to see MANY BULL ELK and got to hear them bugle…it was awesome!
One Bull Elk and his Harem of cows were just feet from us! 
The second day we were there we had wanted to drive over the TRAIL RIDGE ROAD to the western part of the park, where other years we had seen hundreds of elk as well as many MOOSE! This year was our third year in a row to visit the park and had never driven entirely over the TRAIL RIDGE ROAD because of closure due to SNOW! This year the road was open and we decided to go…but stopped by the Visitor Center first as it was rainy that day! As I inquired about the conditions, the Ranger looked at me and said “I would not recommend it today…we just had a call from the top (12,000+ feet high) and they have reported very wet roads with SNOW and they may have to close off the road within the next couple of hours! Needless to say, we did NOT make it over the top again and decided not to drive the 100+ miles around to Grand Lake…so NO MOOSE this time!!! We just hung out driving from one Elk viewing area to another within the eastern part of the park. 
On the way back to our camper at Loveland we stopped at the CHERRY HOUSE and bought some Cherry Cider, Horseradish Mustard and canned Cherry Pie filling (all made in CO)…we had already stopped on the way out and purchased fresh COLORADO PEACHES…they were delicious!!! What a wonderful visit to ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK...can't wait to return again soon!!! As I write this it is one month from the date we were there and they have lots of SNOW and we are HOT in FLORIDA!
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