Big Thompson River Canyon Estes Park, CO

Well I decided to divert off Rte 36 at the very western edge of KS and cut up into the very southwest corner of Nebraska before getting on Rte 34. Rte 34 takes me right to Estes Park, CO where I am now. I have been here many times before, but never tire of the beauty. It rained yesterday and I stopped for a good dinner at a Texas Road House so I arrived here after dark. I found a campground with sites right along the Big Thompson River. I had a little adrenaline rush as a mule deer jumped out in front of me coming up the canyon in the dark. Praise the Lord for ABS brakes in the rain. I was only going about 35 but he was about 300 lbs, so it would not have been a good meeting. I pitched the tent in the rain, crawled in and snuggled up to a nice dry sleeping bag. I then began to remember one of the other times I was here. It was in the fall of 1976 and a fellow teacher and I had come out to the National Association of Biology Teachers convention in Denver. We tried to come up this road, but there had been a flash flood from a severe cloud burst and rescue operations were still going on to retrieve bodies from the trees all along the canyon. 129 peeople died in that flood in a few minutes. As I lay there trying to get to sleep, I kept wondering if floods like lightning ever strike twice in the same place. I survived and did not need to swim or climb for my life. See the next post.