Gold and Beautiful

Our trip to Colorado was a bit shorter than what we would have liked. We were there for 6 days and would have loved to stay for a few more.... always :-) We had been wanting to go to Rocky Mountain National Park for a while and were happy to finally get the chance to go. Obviously, it's a huge park with several entrances. We skipped the usual Estes Park entrance to avoid the crowds and try something different. We were there in late July and the park was extremely crowded. So, choosing to stay on the west side of the park was a good idea. You can of course, split your time between the two entrances. Camping at the park fills up very quickly, even though there are several campgrounds. There are a couple of campgrounds that are on a walk-in basis, but these tend to fill up pretty quickly in the morning ( Campground information ). So, I have to be upfront and say that we love hiking. That however, does not mean that we hike too much or don't do anything else at all. About 10

So, I skipped blogging about our Sedona and Orissa trips, but hope to get back to them some day. I am too excited to write about my first ever road trip with my sister. We had been talking about traveling together for ages, but it never materialized. And when it did, it was so easy and fun!!! So, why Oregon? Several people asked me about our choice. And quite honestly, we needed to pick a place that both of us had not visited. I love the west coast, but we didn't want to go to California. So, we picked Oregon. We really wanted to drive around and see multiple places and different landscapes. Oregon turned out to be as beautiful as California, but much less crowded. We were able to hike in solitude and take plenty of pictures without a whole bunch of tourists in the background. We were there during the week of July 4th holiday and except for Crater National Park did not find any crowded places. So, we truly enjoyed it. I used this itinerary as a starting point and modified it a l