RoMo: the quirky side

To close out my Rocky Mountain National Park posts, I wanted to tell you about a couple of really neat places to which we were introduced by our host-with-the-most.

Neither are actually in the Park, but they're close enough that a visit there will put you in close proximity, and they are both worth a stop.

The gorgeously-furnished porch above is outside the dining room at the Baldpate Inn, a truly funky place that we stopped by for a snack after our Wild Basin hike.

It's a little hard to know where to start in describing this place, and I strongly suggest you check the link above to see much more of its charms than I was able to get good pictures of. The "History and Key Collection" link is the one to choose. I didn't get a good shot of the amazing ceiling dripping with keys from all over, and for some reason I neglected to snap any of their historical photos (perhaps I was too engrossed in trying to identify all the celebrities that have visited the place over the years).

I did get a clear shot of one wall of the key room, just to give you a taste:

Besides being a really beautifully rustic structure, the history of the place is just fascinating; be sure to read the website's summary. (I have one of those nagging feelings that I read, a long time ago, either the play or the novel for which the Inn is named: Seven Keys to Baldpate. I should look it up on Project Gutenberg and give it a re-read; sounds like an interesting story.)

But what about that snack?

That's my piece of chocolate creme pie, which tasted as heavenly as it looked, and surely over-replaced the calories I had expended on the hike. Henry was busy with his own fruit pie (he doesn't think flavors like chocolate creme are actually real pies, but, hey, that leaves more for me!).

And here's the view from our pie-table:

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Earlier in our visit, our host, who's super-knowledgeable about all things local, took us to Colorado Cherry's Lyons location, in pursuit of some treats for our desserts later on.

This is another charmingly quirky place that offers a a rather dazzling array of cherry- and other-fruit-related products. Here's Henry, agog in one of the store's rooms, not knowing where to look first:

Most of the items you can see here are various juices and ciders, but we also picked up a delicious cherry pie, which of course led to several Twin Peaks jokes over the next couple of days.

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And finally, you might remember that this wasn't our first trip in 2017 to Estes Park. We were here in January for a friend's wedding and stayed at the historically spooky Stanley Hotel. If you want to see some winter-scape photos of this lovely building, I refer you to this earlier post; and here for a selective tour of it's elegant interiors.

Here's the way it looks in June:

I wish we could have looked around it some and been able to compare it to our previous snowy (and icy) encounter, but we just didn't have time. Perhaps on a future visit to this wonderful valley.