travels (13B): estes park, colorado

October 1991. The rented Jeep Cherokee grumbled up the mountainside. We came to a place where the highway widened out a dozen yards or so, parallel parking spots lined up along the low stone wall, nothing but empty space beyond that, another mountainside many miles distant. When I got out to admire the view, I could see that there was actually a jumble of boulders beyond the wall, then a gently sloping hillside for quite a distance, and then an apparent dropoff. (I had wondered why people were so brave about walking along that low stone wall.) My poor wife, however, was by this time traumatized by the five-digits-above-sea-level environment and wouldn't get out of the Jeep.

I briefly considered pretending to frantically lose my balance atop the wall, then hopping down to crouch on the other side. Decided against this for two reasons: (a) didn't wish to cause a coronary in the woman who had said I do to me in our church only two weeks earlier; and (b) October in the Colorado Rockies is way too cold to spend the night alone in a Jeep Cherokee.

BTW, we visited lots of other places on our honeymoon that she did enjoy.