Where's the air?

2010-7-25 Mt. Evans

Treasure here. Chris and Mom love to take car trips, and I got to go along again. We drove to the top of Mt. Evans. I had a surprise this time - Chris brought Stanley. He's a rather large cat, but Bearry and I  got along with him just fine.

Mt. Evans has the highest paved road in the United States. At the top it's over 14,000 feet. That's almost 3 times as high as where we live now! It's so high the air is very thin and is quite difficult to breathe up there. We were moving a little slow and had to catch our breath a lot, but we managed. The road is a little scary, so Chris had to drive cause Mom gets vertigo.

I can't even begin to describe what it's like up there, so you just have to look at the pictures (click on the picture and it will take you to the other pictures). You start driving, and you just keep going up and up and up. Close to the top there are a lot of switchbacks. If you don't know what that is, it's a place where the road makes a really sharp turn kind of like folding the road in half as it climbs the mountain.

We were surprised how many people were riding bicycles up the mountain road. It's steep, narrow, scary, and it really is hard to breath up there. You have to be in really good shape to bicycle up there. We could barely walk!

We saw mountain goats and a marmot, but I didn't get pictures. There was no place safe to pull off the road to take them. I did get lots of pictures of the drive, and the alpine flowers were amazing. I got lots of pictures of them, too.

We made all kinds of stops on the way back down. Of course we found a place to stop and stick our feet in the creek. It seems Mom and Chris can't go anywhere without finding a creek to stick their toes in. Not me - that water is cold! Also on the way home we saw a golden eagle flying overhead.

I had such a good time. I can't wait for my next adventure!