Regional
(2009-07-06)
Listen Now:
FT. COLLINS, CO
(KUNC) -
null
The tradition of loading up the family and taking a trip to the mountains is alive and well this summer. KUNC commentator Laura Bridgwater would suggest a visit to Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park - but not during the daytime.
Like the Post-it Note and penicillin, discovering our favorite local trip happened by accident. We weren't looking for adventure, just a good night's sleep.
One July we had been camping in Grand Lake when our daughter, Lizzie, who was one year old at the time, woke up crying. We patted her, tucked in the sleeping bag, and rolled over.
That wasn't what she had in mind. We'd been camping for a week and she d been, well, sleeping like a baby.
Now it was more like Rosemary's baby. Her cries ricocheted off of our fellow campers' tents and reverberated among the tall pines.
Desperately, we tried to calm her before she awakened the unshowered and unshaven mobs, who might come for us armed with axes or at least coat hangers gooey with marshmallow guts.
We strapped Lizzie in her car seat and drove around the campground, crunching gravel as quietly as we could. I flicked the flashlight on and off. We sang Winnie the Pooh.
"Nothing's working," my husband observed.
"No kidding," I said. I was close to crying myself.
"Well, we could drive home now," he offered.
"At midnight?"
"Why not? We're wide awake and we're leaving tomorrow anyway."
But what began as a head start soon turned into lost time. After tossing our gear in the car, we drove 30 minutes only to discover that Berthoud Pass was closed for construction.
The few motels in the sparsely populated area flashed no vacancy signs.
Should we pitch the tent again? That seemed silly, and besides, Lizzie was asleep by now, of course.
There was one more option, but it wasn't a great one. We could take Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in the continental United States.
We live on the Front Range, so to cell-phone toting, coffee-press packing car-campers like us, it was not a drive to undertake lightly.
For starters, we weren't sure if the road was open at night because it went through Rocky Mountain National Park. We worried about the abundance of hairpin curves and the lack of guardrails and lighting. We were concerned about hitting elk and deer.
So there we sat at the park entrance, debating the way home.
Our headlights glanced off of the unmanned fee stations. The road was open. The weather was clear. There was nothing to stop us but our own good sense.
We chose the second lane to the right and straight on til morning.
Our fear about the drive soon gave way to awe as we realized that the night sky was jammed with so many stars that the constellations we were used to viewing were lost to us in an astronomical number of twinkles.
With each hairpin curve in the road we rose higher and higher until we felt as if we were in the opening sequence to Star Wars, Episode 4. I imagined that if we pushed some secret button on the dashboard, our station wagon would blast off for galaxies far, far away.
Only one other car passed us that night. We didn't drive off the side of the road and no animals left the world via our bumper. In fact, before we were safely home we were planning the next time we would boldly go in search of dark skies.
We've been stargazing every summer since that first nervous drive nine years ago, but now we begin our trip at a more reasonable hour. We leave home in the late afternoon and head above timberline, a stellar place to view stars because of reduced light pollution.
We wave at the last tourists heading down the mountain and we don light jackets to watch the sunset and the first star emerge. By the time its dark enough to see the Milky Way whatever earthly worries we have shrink when compared to the enormity of the universe. When the kids get tired, we head home.
Over the years, we've shared our stargazing trip with others. We tell them they should visit a national park at night. Drive slowly, watch for large mammals, and remember to look up.
We know. Our screaming baby taught us so.
© Copyright 2012, KUNC
