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On Monday it was bitterly cold. We were dressed like Michelin men and still felt the cold wind, but it didn't stop us from doing a 12 mile walk to
Alberta Falls, Mills Lake and Black Lake.
We only intended to go as far as Mills Lake but then someone told us that the walk up to Black Lake is fantastic. What they didn't mention was that
the last part of the walk was all under snow!
On the way up to Mills Lake there were stretches of the path where we had to walk in the snow but after Mills Lake it was totally snow covered. It
was quite treacherous, especially when we had to traverse steep slopes. But the scenery was indeed fantastic.
Black Lake was frozen and it was so bitterly cold that we didn't stay very long. On the way back we both fell over in the snow! The first time was
fun but after Helen had fallen down for the fifth time it was getting a bit much!!
Helen kept shouting to Kirsten "Ass wiping time" so that Kirsten could knock the snow off her!!!
Due to the snow the walk was pretty exhausting. We got back to Winnie around 4-30pm. After a bowl wash and hair washing we drove back to Judy's.
She came over and we sat chatting for about 2 hours.
On Tuesday we did a lovely 4 mile walk to Bear, Nymph, Dream and Emerald Lakes. Then we drove to Gem Lake to do a 4 mile steep uphill walk to the
small and very pretty lake.
Back at Judy's we went to her house and were introduced to "Luna" - a very cute and cuddly Chinchilla. She is looking after her for her daughter.
Luna loves to take a bath - which for a Chinchilla consists of sand in a pot.
Chinchilla's die if they get wet so they clean themselves by diving into the sand and rolling around in it. It obviously works because her fur is
so soft that you can hardly feel it on your fingers.
Judy let her out of her cage which she thought was the absolute best thing in the world! She ran around all over the place, through our legs,
behind the furniture, and then finally went back into her cage.
Then we had to say goodbye because we were leaving the next morning and Judy would have already gone to work by 6-30am.
On Wednesday Judy had left us a bag of goodies including trail mix, sun cream, body lotion etc. She had already given us loads of paperback books
and some shoe attachments for walking on ice. We couldn't thank her enough as otherwise we wouldn't have been able to find anywhere to stay so that
we could spend time in the Rockies.
We drove down to the south eastern corner of the park and did a 6 mile walk from Wild Basin Trailhead to Cascade Falls and Ouzel Falls which was a
really nice walk in the sun. Then we headed further south towards Denver and found a place in Roosevelt National Forest to stay for the night.
On Thursday we drove into Denver, went to visitor centres and Camping World to find out about storage for Winnie, dump stations etc.
On Friday we went around looking at various storage places and booked Winnie in. Over the next few days we had to get Winnie ready for storage and
get ourselves sorted out aswell!!
Unfortunately it was really hot in Denver and we were inside Winnie sorting everything out!! Helen even had to have the fan on whilst she was doing the washing up to try and keep cool.
