Day 5—Estes Park to Steamboat Springs

We spent the day recovering from a pretty harrowing night in the Stanley Hotel’s “Heritage Room.” For those that don’t know, the Stanley Hotel inspired Steven King‘s “The Shining.” He thought of the whole thing after waking from a nightmare about his son in room 217. Apparently more than 50% of the guests stay there because of the movie. No joke, after not having any more rooms of the type we reserved, we were shown to a dilapidated wing of the building and were given a spacious “suite” which looked very much like it had not been used for decades. As Art alluded to in his post, there were many legit creepy things about the room, including that the TV only showed one channel and its colors were off such that the people shown looked like ghosts. As the sun went down, a far-off electrical storm lit up the sky. Art loved it, and we later used the opportunity to actually watch Kubrick’s “The Shining” on the iPad. What’s kind of weird is that Art had been listening to the soundtrack for years already, so for him it was a unique experience pairing the modernist music to the images. I had forgotten how amazing the movie is.

The morning drive though the Rocky Mountain national park to Grand Lake was beautiful, as expected. Outside the park, the scenery from Granby to Kremmling was ho-hum—we concluded that Colorado has plenty of ugly scenery, in between the well-known spots. Steamboat Springs was a welcome return to natural beauty and civilization. Really well-appointed hotel/town with all the amenities, including pool and hot tub. We celebrated our arrival with a dip and a trip to a Biergarten at the foot of the ski hill. We concluded the day by chilling out with Seinfeld’s Netflix special. All in all a relaxing, recharging kind of day.