Estes Park, Colorado - January 3-10

In Estes Park we stay at the wonderful Rockmount Cottages, which are only a mile or so from the Rocky Mountain National Park entrance, and walking distance from the Rock Inn, a traditional tavern with great dinners and live music most evenings.

On Thursday, after a lazy start, we headed into RMNP to hike around the Moraine Park, starting from the Cub Lake Trailhead. There was not much snow on the ground close to the trailhead, but a lot of ice, so we opted for micro-spikes on our boots rather than snowshoes. We kept this outing to two hours, just getting our legs warmed up and getting ourselves acclimatized to the altitude. About a half mile in we encountered some deeper snow, so it will be snowshoes tomorrow!

On Friday, we decided to tackle the Bierstadt Moraine Trail, which runs from the Park & Ride parking lot up to Bierstadt Lake and is about a three mile round trip. We have done this hike twice before in summer, but never in winter. Three miles does not sound like much, but with snow and ice and an 850 ft ascent, it was challenging enough for us! It was cold, but sunny, and the views were spectacular. We made it to the lake, but after a quick peek at it we retreated - the wind across the lake was fierce and we then realized how sheltered we had been among the trees.

On the drive back to the cottage we spotted a group of male elk just sunning themselves in someone’s front yard - we managed a few photos without getting too close.

Colorado Road Trip Overview - January 2-14

We decided that for our snowshoe and ski trip to Colorado that we would drive rather than fly. It is 14 hours from Austin to Estes Park, which we decided to do over two days, staying the night in Amarillo on the way. The plan is for a week in Estes Park, snowshoeing in the Rocky Mountain National Park, then a few days in Breckenridge skiing. We go to Estes Park every year, but Breck is new to us. One advantage to driving rather than flying is that we can take everything we might need!

London England - November 20-24

We added a few days in London after the cruise to visit with my brother Laurence and his wife Laura, and to go with them to a King Lear production in the West End. We stayed at the Ham Yard Hotel off Piccadilly and on Tuesday November 22, we met L&L for dinner at a lovely restaurant in Notting Hill, which I won't name due to what happened next. King Lear tickets were for the next evening, but by then I had a full case of food poisoning which lasted a painful 24 hours, so L&L had to go to the play by themselves. Next day I was better, and we went to see Sondheim’s Old Friends that evening, which was wonderful. Then later that night, it was Laura’s turn to come down with the same food poisoning and my turn to take on nurse duties. We ended up flying home to Austin a day late, to make sure we could both survive a 10 hour flight. Ugh! What a rotten end to a great trip.