Estes Park, a two-hour drive north of Denver, is a town where the majesty of the Rockies collides with the culture of miniature golf. But most people who make it to Estes go for the Rockies. Or, more specifically, they go to drive the Trail Ridge Road.
Beginning just outside Estes and ending at Grand Lake, the 77km road traverses Rocky Mountain National Park. Also known as Route 34, it has been inspiring superlatives since 1932. Among other things, it's the highest paved road in the US. Seventeen kilometres of the road are above the tree line and 12km are above 3,350 metres. At its highest, the road reaches 3,713 metres above sea level.
The show - and it's just that, one glorious vista after another - begins at West Horseshoe Park, an expansive mountain meadow bounded by rust-coloured pines and home to bighorn sheep. Next is Many Parks Curve, a lookout where cameras never seem to leave faces. Here the view is of huge, forested moraines, more mountain meadows and the 4,346-metre Longs Peak. The mountain's friendly profile masks the steadily mounting toll of hikers and mountaineers who perish on its icy slopes.
It's hard to pull away from any of the views, but you soon realise there are always more to come. By Rainbow Curve, at 3,300 metres, the forest has thinned and only the hardiest trees remain. Clutching at the mountainside, petrified by the 160km/h winds that whip the slopes in winter, these stunted testaments to nature's tenacity have been shorn of all but their downwind branches.
But on Trail Ridge Road nature isn't the only supplier of spectacles. Equally captivating are fellow road users. From a group of hirsute Christian bikers to 10-metre recreational vehicles and a purring white stretch limousine, we're accompanied by every imaginable slice of mechanised America.
We pass a mountain biker resting and sweating beside one of the six-metre poles that in winter snows mark the edges of the road. Sometimes even these are buried. It can take the park service 40 days to clear the road at winter's end.