You Can’t Get There from Here

As we were wrapping up our first ever Sober and Unashamed Couples Retreat in Grand Lake, Colorado, on Sunday, one of the the attendees told me that he and his wife wanted to go to Estes Park before their flight home Sunday night. He showed me the route that Google suggested to him, and we discussed his options.

The summer drive from Grand Lake to Estes Park takes you right through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road, and is among the most beautiful 47 miles of scenic roadway in the world. You crest the majestic Rocky Mountains, are likely to see moose or elk, look across clear mountain lakes and experience views that are unmistakably Colorado. It is a winding road full of switchbacks and steep ascents that will take well over an hour to traverse, but the drive is the experience, and you won’t mind if it takes all day.

The winter is another story, entirely. The summit of Trail Ridge Road in the heart of Rocky (the affectionate name we Coloradans have for our beloved national park) is over 12k feet, and the route is impassable and closed in the winter. So this past Sunday, in order to get 47 miles from where we were standing in Grand Lake, my friends had to drive their rental car over 150 miles — out of the mountains and back to the plains of Denver, then back into the mountains to the north — for the next four hours. The drive would include lots of…