It's weeks like these that make you realise just how little you really need in life. Nothing more than nature and friends and we've been happy as Larry. I've lost count of the wild animals we've spotted and it's been a real treat to spend some time off the bikes around family life once more.

The day didn't start all that well for me as the chilli we'd cooked up the night before was having its revenge in ways you wouldn't like described! I felt a little dodgy all day actually but there were some perks to keep my mind off it. Firstly, we received the fantastic news that our stay in the USA can be officially extended due to the Covid19 situation (the original plan was to be in Mexico by now). And perk no. 2 was an XL Dominoes pizza that served us for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Fuelling us up to skirt around lakes, down valleys and up a mountain pass to a national forest which looked like it was being sadly sold off to industry as we gazed into a large empty reservoir from the edge of a huge industrial facility by the spot we'd chosen for the night.

Stomachs still groaning from the work of digesting that pizza, we awoke in rather grumpy fashion to hit the road hard so we could make it to the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park for a few days of hiking. The day was in all honesty a boring one and only spiced up by some petrol station lunch and sad news from home. But we trundled through it and set up camp in the forest right next to the park and met up once more with our new friends from the previous week; Beatriz, Alberto, Nicolás and Enrique. It was lovely to see them again and such a huge coincidence that we were going to the same place at the same time that we thought it would have been impossible to have planned it on purpose! Well it was fate, and fate we realised we'd be so grateful for while driving up to some of the highest paved road in the United States the next day...

We awoke as a little family all together in our slice of the Arapaho National Forest and according to Alberto we were sharing it with some nearby moose! It was time to head into the park and do some serious hiking together as a team, so we swapped the bikes for petrol powered transport and joined Beatriz, Alberto and family into the 'wild'. Starting in the valley by Grand Lake we warmed up with a little hike as the kids made some use of their Junior Park Rangers booklets (I think I was more into these books than them!) which gave them all sorts of information and a wildlife "gotta catch 'em all" check list. Then over a natter we drove up a huge hillside to the road that runs along the ceiling of the park. Wow! Stunning, and windy it turned out as we struggled to chow down some sandwiches in the howling gales at the top! This road went on for what didn't seem like such a long time but, as we'd find out on the way back, it was an exceedingly long way as we ended up driving for some 200km and getting back well into dark (and that so near the summer solstice!). Anywho, we rolled over to the east side of the park and hiked the famous lakes of "Bear", "Nymph", "Dream" and "Emerald" until the kids and myself could hardly put one foot in front of the other and headed back to base camp. With the sun slipping behind the surrounding mountains wildlife started to crackle into life all around us as deer and elk strewed the landscape all of a sudden. And then the tell tail sign of a good sighting, a million cars parked on a dodgy mountain road bend... But we were not to be disappointed as there was black bear mum with her cubs playing around at her side, climbing trees and somehow totally cool about the spectators all around (it's one of the country's most visited parks so it a shame that the wildlife are not so wild after all). In any case I was blown away and some close encounters with Elk further up the mountain was only really to be expected after all this excitement. Night fell and somehow Alberto didn't fall asleep at the wheel as we trundled back to our friends the moose who were keeping our campsite safely guarded for us.

Day two of park fun and the threat of thunderstorms stopped us straying too far. There was a more cultural, historical feel to the routes as we'd visit an old 'dude ranch', where back in the early days of tourism people would come to experience the wild, and the site of an old mining town. A small settlement of folk who were unfortunately displaced by a lack of gold or other valuables in the hillsides, or should I say luckily as otherwise the place may just have been completely turned over and never been able to become a park! We joked and played with the little ones as we chatted the day away amongst skimming stones and drinking red wine from Alberto's wineskin. The rainfall dispersed the remaining hikers and brought out the wildlife, as we were the last to leave the car park and ran into a meadow filled with hundreds of Elk! Amazing, and amazing too to share dinner time with the family as we each cooked up a storm in their trailer tent and saw the night out with beers, wine and ginger and lemon tea a plenty (to keep the tea-o-meter ticking over nicely!).

After some hard miles on our poor little legs we decided to wait the day out in the tent as some heavy showers passed overhead and our new family headed out for some more leg torture. We made friends with the local moose however and, I at least, had a good long sleep. I'm not sure if it was from the hiking wearing me out or the pancakes Ruth had loaded with enough baking power to make your tongue tingle. But it didn't matter. I really needed the rest as I was feeling pretty done in all day long. We did have the pleasure of a lovely garden to sit around as Enrique and Nicolás had decorated the place with fallen trees, some of which were really quite impressive in size for two little 8-year-olds... Later, Alberto proved to be quite the handy man as, amongst all the little gadgets he'd managed to create to ease the camping lifestyle at little expense, he opened up his portable hairdressers to Ruth who had the pleasure of an outdoor trim! Looking even more radiant than usual, Ruth and I again passed the evening away in the trailer tent.

Today we were back on the road and left late in the day, the standard 3 hour Spanish goodbye. Nothing much more than strong headwinds filling my memories as we backtracked to a campsite in the town of Kremmling, poor Ruth had it worse as her throat was playing up a little...

And finally a well deserved day off to end the week, catching up on little things at the campsite while preparing for some days on the Great Divide mountain bike route that follows the continental divide all the way from Canada down to the border with Mexico. We'd had enough of the increasing levels of traffic as the Coronavirus restrictions ease and the metropolis of Denver looming just around the corner so want some peace and quiet over the next few days up in the mountains.