Six months after our wedding, I was drafted into the Army. Shortly thereafter, in June 1967, I was sent to Vietnam. When I returned home one year later, my wife and I decided we needed to get away by ourselves to get "reacquainted."
We went to Rocky Mountain National Park. After the low altitude and high temperatures of Vietnam, I had difficulty catching my breath and keeping warm, but we thoroughly enjoyed the park. Its calm, quiet solitude was just what I needed after Vietnam, and we both gained a greater appreciation of the natural world and our national parks.
Since then, we have become national park "junkies." By the time of our 50th wedding anniversary, we had been to 43 of the 59 national parks, several of them multiple times. We look forward to visiting some of our "missing parks" over the years to come.
Sincerely,
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National park offers breathtaking views of the spectacular Rocky Mountain range, with 60 peaks over 12,000 feet, small permanent glaciers, lakes, waterfalls, and historic and cultural treasures including ancient trails, game drives, cattle ranches and lodges. This park’s rugged landscapes harbor hundreds of high-elevation plant and animal species — some that are increasingly rare outside the park or are found nowhere else. Some of the park’s human-made structures speak to the boom-and-bust cycles and neverending search for adequate water supplies that characterized the nation’s westward expansion.
State(s): Colorado
Established: 1915
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