Thursday, November 19, 2015

Estes Park Travel Blog – Thanksgiving Weekend

It’s that time of year! Your family has been planning this for a long time and Thanksgiving weekend is upon us. This is your first time to Estes Park. You saw a friend’s blog on their great summer vacation and the family decided that spending Thanksgiving weekend in the mountain town was a great idea. But what do you do to make it great for your family and when you post your blog, make all of your friends go, “Ooo, Ahh?”

Here’s a little taste of a Thanksgiving weekend in Estes Park sure to fill the family with a ton of great memories and make all of your friends jealous (you know that’s what you really want!)

Thanksgiving Day in Estes Park, Colorado. What a way to wake up with elk and deer in the yard outside of the cabin; a virtual wildlife parade while you sit and enjoy your coffee. It’s just amazing that these creatures seem to have no fear of humans.  You are responsible and don’t try to pet them; they are wild animals after all; who have just adapted to human habitation. The camera is loaded with some great photographs!

Photo Courtesy of Melissa Addison

The family is ready to celebrate Thanksgiving. There are many choices to eat Thanksgiving dinner in town. You decide on the Mountain View Bible Fellowship Church Community Thanksgiving Dinner where you can sit with locals and other visitors, talk and be served by the Mayor of Estes Park and other community members, and buy homemade treats of all kinds. You walk away completely stuffed. But what else is there to do?

Reel Mountain Theater is open seven days a week, 365 days a year. A movie is the perfect ending to your Thanksgiving day and they are playing the one you wanted to see!

The day after Thanksgiving (that day some retailers call Black Friday, but here in Estes we call just another beautiful day in paradise), you decide to go into town and shop. There is something for everyone in Estes Park and you are a little afraid your wallet might not handle the strain of hiking stores, bookstores, gifts and trinkets, and great food.

But it’s not over with a day of shopping., You have staked your place along Elkhorn Ave. With your hot chocolate and blankets, the family is set to watch the Estes Park Catch The Glow Christmas Parade. It’s chilly and as the sun sets flakes begin to fall but the parade goes on. With the street lit buy hundreds of lights on the trees, there is a plethora of floats celebrating Estes Park, Christmas and Rocky Mountain National Park and the favorite float of all – SANTA!

Photo Courtesy of John Cordsen

Saturday you brave the clear but chilly weather to take the horse crazy family member on an hour ride at one of the stables open all year round. It’s cold, but you see some beautiful views, that you follow up by a nice breakfast in town to warm you up, some shopping at a local holiday market and a ghost tour at the Stanley Hotel. A ghost tour –this isn’t Halloween – it’s Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas Holiday. Well if you remember, there are three Christmas ghosts – perhaps they are at the Stanley!

After your tour (where you are pretty certain you saw at least ONE of the Stanley’s many ghosts), you join local celebrity Cowboy Brad for his annual Christmas Concert. The hall is packed and you are glad you bought the tickets online before the event, because it’s sold out. With his band, Cowboy Brad gets everyone in the Christmas spirit and the children are asking to come back to Estes Park on Christmas!

                                                                             Photo Courtesy Country Roads LLC

One more day, and that is spent in none other than Rocky Mountain National Park.  While Trail Ridge Road is closed for the season over to Grand Lake, it is open to Many Parks Curves and the sites are beautiful. Words can’t describe it, but you know every picture is worth a thousand words and you have plenty of pictures.

Photo Courtesy of Melissa Addison


On the way home, the children are still asking about an Estes Park Christmas and you are trying to figure out how to break your blog down; otherwise it will be a one-hundred-page essay! Thanks for coming – Estes Park hopes to leave you with such great problems again!

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