When we got to the top, we had a picnic lunch. We had gone to a nearby deli before our climb and gotten a pumpernickel turkey sandwich with deli pickle that was sooo good. Here is our lunch view. The mountains were a purple color. Reminded me of John Denver's song: "Rocky Mountain High". 
It was a rainy day today, so we decided to drive down to Denver for lunch at Emil-lene's Sirloin House (http://www.sirloinhouse.com/ ) for a steak lunch and then down to Golden to take a tour at the Coors Brewery. What a facility--all 5 sq. miles of it. We had a great tour guide--Dotty. They create everything there on site--bottles, cans, beer, packaging, etc. We were impressed. We each got 3 beer to try after the tour. We tried: Blue Moon, which they served with an orange slice (Great); Zima Tangerine (refreshing); Harvest Moon (Pumpkin spice) (okay); and Killian's Irish Red (good). It was a fun tour and just a few weeks ago, they opened their VA brewery in Shenandoah Valley. See a virtual tour at http://www.coors.com/brews_tours.asp .
What a wonderful, sunny cool day we had to drive the Trail Ridge Road up to 11,720 ft. We entered at the Beaver Meadows Entrance near the campground and exited at the Grand Lake Entrance, had lunch in Granby and returned back over the same Trail Ridge Road. At noon, it was 34 degF with a 48-mph wind at the top at the Alpine Visitor Center. We took so many pictures that I had a hard time picking out which ones to show you!
Here's a view of some of the snow up near the top. 
Santa Fe Royal Gorge Train--wasn't it a gorgeous day!
This was our dome car where we had a gourmet 3-course lunch with a view.
Here we are waiting to depart. All aboard!
After lunch, we went out on the open air car to take pictures of the gorge, the rafters and the Royal Gorge Bridge 
We got an early start this morning and had a sunny, blue sky drive up the Pikes Peak road. What a drive with “W” turns at the top where there were no trees and NO guard rails! (See photo.) We took LOTS of pictures all the way up. Remember, this is our first day of seeing Colorado “rocks”. We reached the top about 10:40 a.m., a 19-mile climb, 14,110 ft above sea level (2-1/2 miles high), 43 deg F, with 53.6% available oxygen! No wonder we felt dizzy and light headed. We took more pictures at the top, waiting for the Cog railway to leave at 11:20 and the cafeteria to clear out before we got lunch. We were glad we did our picture taking before lunch because after we had sleet and pea-sized hail! This continued until we got down to mile 13 where there was a Brake Check Booth. Our brakes registered 267 deg F; if you register close to 300 degrees F, you have to pull off to cool your brakes for 20 to 30 minutes. We stopped any way and went into the gift shop. The sky opened with thunder and lightning and hail (see Photo). The ground turned white and then it rained so hard that it washed it all away.
The Campbell’s left for home this morning where they will close on the sale of their lake house at Lake Webster, IN tomorrow. We got to be the last ones to camp there. In the afternoon, we visited the statue of the tallest man in the world—Robert Wadlow who was 5’6” at age 5, 6’5” and 200 lbs at age 10, which made him the largest Boy Scout in the world, and 8’ll.1” and 490 lbs when he died at the age of 22. Then we toured the Melvin Price Lock and Dam and the National Great Rivers Museum where we were fortunate enough to get to see a tow with barges going thru the lock. Go to http://www.mvr.usace.army.mil/ to get information about the daily traffic and tonnage through the locks. Click on “Get lock and vessel info,” then “OMNI Reports”; then “Reports”, and then choose a report to run. Report 3a is popular because it shows the daily vessel lockages. Think about this as you drive the roads of America: 1 barge going up or down the Mississippi is the equivalent of 58 semi trucks that are NOT on our roads! A 15-barge tow, which was like what we saw on the river, is equivalent to 870 semis! You can see just how important our rivers are.
