Mount Evans Adventure

You might wonder why there's an axe leaning against my car. I'll get to that shortly.

In my quest to "do all the fun things in Colorado before we move to Tennessee," I decided to make a trip to Mount Evans. Mount Evans is the highest paved road in North America and is only open Memorial Day - Labor Day. We made a trip to the bottom of the mountain last Fall and got some cute pictures of Olivia at Echo Lake (You can read about it here). She wasn't up to the last 14 miles last year, so we didn't make it to the summit. Yesterday, I showed her some pictures of mountain goats and asked if she wanted to go see where they lived. Needless to say, she was very excited!
I snapped a few pictures in our backyard before we left:







Side note- I have a 30 day trial of Lightroom 3 (photo editor) and I LOVE it, hence the more edited photos.

Anyway, we left relatively early (10ish in the morning), since we have been having massive thunderstorms every afternoon this week. We had a great drive to the bottom of the mountain, listening to Olivia's favorite kid CD. We turned onto the road leading to the summit and started watching for mountain goats. The scenery was gorgeous.



Finally at the 13th mile, we spotted a herd of mountain goats:



Olivia was thrilled and demanded to get out of the car to get a better look. Most of the cars were pulled off the road, so we joined them. What she didn't realize is how cold it would be at 14000 feet in elevation. I put her coat on, but she refused to walk and wanted to be carried. A nice woman saw me struggling to juggle her and take a picture and offered to get take a shot of us together:



Baby goats:



We continued up to the summit:



Olivia was not thrilled with the wind or 40 degree temperature:



Here's a shot of the road we were on:



We ate the lunch I packed in the car at the summit, then headed down the mountain. Here's where it gets interesting.
We were 5 miles from the top when Olivia tells me she has to go potty. There's a lake with restrooms and a scenic view right at mile 9, so we pulled over there. I got out of the car and went to get Olivia. I decide to leave my purse in the car, so with the back door open, I lock the car and unbuckle her. She had taken her shoes off, so we got those back on and she tells me she wants to go see the water. Thinking it would be another place for a good picture, I decide to get the camera out. By this point, I'm burning up and decide to take my coat off. I throw it in the backseat and close the locked door WITH THE KEYS IN MY COAT. I realized it immediately. We rushed through the restroom and I started looking for a park ranger. No sign of one. There was a group there working on a conservation project and had a radio. They tried to radio a park ranger, but couldn't get a signal. Panicking, I asked the first person I saw to tell the park rangers at the bottom of the mountain what had happened. By this point Olivia and I both were in tears. The man I asked was with his wife and adult daughter and they offered to drive us the 9 miles to the park rangers.
We get to the rangers and they call a locksmith who informs me it will be a minimum of $350, probably closer to $400 and it would take him at least 3 hours to get there. Frustrated, I ask the park rangers if they have any kind of tools and they said they did and there just so happened to be a few park rangers at the lake where our car is (wish they would have been there earlier!). Once again we caught a ride 9 miles up the mountain to our car. A park ranger worked about 20 minutes, trying to use a wire to unlock the door. By this point, it had been 3 hours. Thunder was booming and the first drops of rain were falling when he said he thought we better just break the window.

Thus, the axe.



The park ranger helping us was so nice, taking his time to duct tape the window before he smashed it with an axe (ha!), then cleaning up the glass and duct taping it again for our drive home. This will be funny one day, right?!
In the end, breaking the window WAS less than calling the locksmith. The window is $190. So with the $10 entry fee to the Mountain, our Mount Evans trip was around $200.



Thus concludes our Mount Evans adventure. Getting the window fixed Wednesday. :)