Border to Border Posse Ride '21 Day 6 - 7

 Today's ride was going through Rocky Mountain National Park, and unfortunately, my inability to properly read didn't allow us to get the $2 entry reservation ticket. Some of the National Parks are doing this the help with traffic in the park. It is a minimal cost but only allows for about 600-900 people a day in the park. The way they were doing this is about two months out they release about 300 tickets. They then release another set and 48 hours out the last 300 are released. I put multiple reminders and alerts on my phone to watch for these, but timezones are extremely important! All of my reminders I put in CDT and not MDT. So I was an hour early and they still showed Sold Out. On the plus side, I learned from this mistake and was able to get our tickets for Yellowstone that was coming up in a couple of days. So if you are planning on going to any National Parks, I would recommend reading up on their websites to see if you need such a pass. I have a Lifetime National Park Pass, and had I not been warned, never would have thought about this. 

We finished up our day with a couple more chips down in Denver and returning to Loveland for the evening.

The next day was a 'Free Day', nothing was planned, no new destinations, just a day to ourselves for whatever. Knowing Zak hadn't been to Pikes Peak made me want to take him. So we talked and I got him up about 0500 for the almost 2.5 hr drive to the State Park. We arrived at the gate about 6 minutes before it opened and already had 30+ people in front of us. There are 3 gates and the Rangers were already checking people out just not letting them enter. This made entry rather quick. Since the Visitor Center on the top is under construction, you are not allowed to drive up past mile 16. So they had 15% off entry and free shuttles to the top. It didn't take long for the temp to start dropping as we started the climb. As we pulled up to the Devil's Playground we got out to take some pics. This just happened to be right where they were stopping everyone. As we looked around, blaming Zak, he got the bright idea to walk the last 3 miles. A decision I quickly regretted!

As we walked there were many beautiful things to see and there were plenty of times to see them as we gasped for air. Thirty to forty minutes in, what felt like hours we had gone almost nowhere!

We continued our trek upward slow and steady to the boulders. Up until this point, Zak had been waiting patiently on me as I would stop and breathe. The ratio for this was like 30 seconds walking and 5 minutes breathing. However, walking didn't require the agility we were soon about to need to traverse the large piles of rocks. With this transition of terrain, I was now the one waiting on him.

Realizing I should have not eaten the full bag of gummies!

Where we parked

14,115' and growing!

Could have taken a train?!

We took the easy way out and rode the shuttle back down. As we exited the bus and started walking back to the car Zak started choking. I'm only to assume the air was so thick he forgot to chew it prior to swallowing. With this comment, Zak only seemed to choke more, probably due to the laughter while choking... 

As we exited the park and got back to normal (for the area) we started heading to more dealers to pick up some poker chips!

Update on the license plates we are up to 42 states with Alberta, Ontario, & Chihuahua.

Chips Zak at 22 and myself at 20.