Sunday, June 26, 2022
Red Rocks Park, Home Sweet Home
We spent the night in Idaho Springs because originally, we'd planned to spend our last day of vacation driving up 14,271-foot Mount Evans on the highest paved road in North America. But it turns out that due to an annual footrace, the road is closed today. A footrace??? Up Mount Evans??? They must be nuts!
Anyway, Plan B: Red Rocks Park, in nearby Morrison. The park is known for its large red sandstone rocks and for the big-name concerts that have been held at its amphitheater for decades.
Legendary Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater
You're allowed to enter Red Rocks Amphitheater to look around when there's not a concert going on. The open-air seating is nestled between two 300-foot stone outcroppings, with another large rock behind the stage, making for awesome acoustics. It didn't seem very big, but supposedly the seating can accommodate up to 9,525 people.
Being so close to Denver and a weekend, there were a lot of people here today. A few folks were doing intense workouts on the amphitheater stairs. At an elevation of 6,450 feet, I do mean INTENSE! One muscle-bound guy was jumping up the seating from row to row. Good Lord.
Amphitheater diorama
Sky-high music venue, 6,450 feet
We caught the Trading Post Trail outside the amphitheater, hiking it counterclockwise. It would have been easy if not for the elevation and our general vacation-end exhaustion, but still, it was worth the effort. The views of the red rock formations and the surrounding mountains were gorgeous.
Trading Post Trail
The green side of the Rockies
Red Rocks Park
The man, the myth, the legend: John Denver
Tonight, Red Rocks Amphitheater was hosting Widespread Panic, and the concert-goers were tailgating early, including three stoners sitting on the ground in the middle of a busy parking lot smoking a blunt. That was at 1:30, and that's about the time we left. By the time the concert started, they were going to be TRASHED.
We still had some time to kill, so we drove a couple of miles to Mount Falcon Park, also in Morrison. From here, we could look down on Red Rocks Park and watch the concert-goers streaming in. We had a picnic lunch while enjoying the view, then got all our gear packed away in readiness to turn in Big Red and catch our flight.
Red Rocks Park from Mount Falcon Park
Eventually, it was time to head to the airport. We were sad to say goodbye to our trusty Nissan Frontier, but we were ready to go home. Final mileage: 2,562 miles. I wonder what adventures Big Red is having now...
THE END
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