Greetings from Rocky Mountain National Park

Thirty years ago we took our first grader and preschooler to Estes Park, Colorado on July 4th. We watched the fireworks in the valley below. The next day we were among the first vehicles to go up the one lane road to the top. The day before the rotary plows had cut their way through the last of the snow blocking the path to the top. Our Ranger allowed us to tip toe along a very narrow path on top, so we could use macro-zoom camera to take our first photos of the only meadow of alpine flowers in the lower 48. He explained how fragile this alpine meadow was, and pointed out two tire tracks of where a vehicle had driven across the alpine meadow some twenty+ years before our arrival. The damaged plants had not recovered from this incident. The day before, I had explained to the children how elevation effected the weather. “To the West the sun would evaporate water in the valleys, and clouds would be created and drift Eastward over the Mts. Here it would snow on the peaks and would be covered with deep snow late into the Spring or early Summer. The snow would melt, run down the mountain sides creating creeks that joined together to make large waterfalls, as the water fell to the warmer valley below, where we would see beaver meadows below. Then the cycle would start all over again.” The next day as we drove through the valley and up to the peak, our pre-schooler screamed: “There it is!” She had seen a snow capped peak and a waterfall and the valley below. She was excited to see it all come together in the wilderness. Today the preschooler has a degree in marine biology and freshwater fisheries, working for the government protecting our environment, and the whole family loves the wilderness and the solitude of kayaking in the wilds. I now have a new career as a fine art photographer of landscapes and wildlife, with repeat clients in five galleries and I give naturalist lectures with instructions on how to keep our parks forever wild, and as beautiful as they see nature in the Giclee canvas images they have just purchased. P.S. We went on to visit six National Parks on our trip that Summer.

Sincerely,
Bob