Wednesday 05 September

Drive Part 1

That evening I drove as far as Rock Springs. Was a reasonably scenic drive through some really quite empty countryside although there's nothing much else interesting to report.

Thursday 06 September

Drive Part 2 and the Medicine Bow Mountains

Next day we continued the drive toward Denver but as we had plenty of time we took a detour through the Medicine Mountains which was well worth it. First there were some really odd looking mountains before we got to the main bit of the range. These looked really cool and have now also been added to my list of places to visit again as I'd like to do the hike along the ridge line and over Medicine Bow Peak and possibly some other hikes as well. Things get rather more boring now. We continued the drive to Denver, stopping off for lunch, and I managed to drop Jen off in plenty of time for her flight. Now all that remained was for me to complete the boring drive through flat, flat Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas. I was again staying in Hays where I arrived at a reasonable time but spent quite a while catching up with e-mails etc before heading to bed.

Medicine Bow Mountains

Friday 07 September

Drive Part 3

Nothing to report here. I got home which brought an end to a stunning two week holiday.

Summary

Again, I though I'd write a quick summary of what I did. I'll start with some stats:

I drove 2969 miles for an average of 175 miles per day - although obviously many of those were getting there and back.

I took 1237 photos for an average of 73 photos per day.

I stayed in three different motels (all Motel 6's) two for a single night and one for two widely-spaced nights, one hotel (the Lake Hotel), 4 different campsites (7 nights) and back country camped for five night.

In summary, a truly stunning holiday. Was slightly different to past holidays due to having someone else with me but for the vast majority of the time this made things more enjoyable. It's really hard to say which part was my favourite as it was all so good. I can say that I think my favorite thermal feature were the Mammoth Hot Springs although I may be biased there as they were the first area we went to. But in general it was all stunning and I want to go back and spend more time in both parks.