Fall Color Tour-Mt Evans Edition

I have been talking about driving up Mt. Evans again for quite some time. Mt. Evans is the highest paved road in North America. This mountain is one of Colorado's 53 "fourteeners" or one of the mountains in this state that have an elevation of 14,000 ft or more. Mt. Evans has stunning views, crazy drop offs, and occasional wildlife sightings. This time of the year you can only make it up to about 12,500 feet. They shut down the rest of the road after Labor Day due to snow and potentially hazardous conditions. The drive up to the lake is still really neat and the little parking area allows visitors to take hikes around the area and up a bit to see more of the impressive mountain. Yesterday was a beautiful blue sky day, perfect for a drive up the mountain. Depending on how many times you stop on your way up and how much time you spend at the lake, this trip up and down the mountain can take a couple of hours. We really enjoyed hiking around the lake area and even found some snow to play in! On our way down we encountered a traffic jam of sorts. Not cars but animals, a whole herd of what we believe to be elk, blocked traffic for a couple of minutes because nobody wanted to try to drive around them (big drop off without a guard rail) and nobody wanted to have an animal impression in their car. So we did what any good tourist would do...we took lots of pictures :) Unfortunately I can't seem to load any of the pictures at this time. After the animals cleared the road we did run into a traffic jam, this time people stopped alongside the road to take pictures of big horn sheep.