It was an odd set of circumstances that lead to me being the only person willing to drive either vehicle over the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, and only with the agreement of "I can be done and turn around whenever I want". I also insisted on a 6:30am departure time which nearly set my mom over the edge but she ultimately relented.
We set out and everything below the tree line was fine. Spending so much time driving on the back roads of Kentucky as a caver really helped me feel comfortable on hills and turns. Then we got above the tree line. And the mountain fell away. So there was the road, the white stripe at the edge of the road and then nothing. I was near tears. I kept telling myself at least on the way down I'd be tucked in along the mountain. Once I got past that, it really looked like I was going to have some bad spots coming down too. We stopped at a pull out, looked at Marmots and I had some breakfast. Ultimately I did declare myself to be done at that point, little did I know that we'd actually reached the highest elevation on the trip.
We turned the car around and headed back down. And the parts I thought were going to be bad were fine. There was ground along side of me (although I couldn't have seen that from the trip up) so I declared the drive back on, found another pull out, turned the car around and headed to the Visitors Center in the Sky, which was where we really planned to turn around.
At the Visitors Center we met Ranger Robert who was all "oh no, go down the other side, it's nothing like what you came up" and then "there's a lodge by this lake and you can have lunch..." The rest of my passengers were sold and the drive down did look different. I knew I'd just driven by some things that would be hard on the way back (the edge would be on my side of the road that way) but I had some confidence in me from surviving the trip up to that point.
Ranger Robert was correct, the other side of the mountain had apparently never been attacked by a glacier and looked a lot different. We saw multiple Moose, which was cool as hell, and some other great sights.
The way back home into Estes Park was challenging. Passenger Marge figured out the right combination to help me. Whenever we got to a part I didn't like (where it felt like I was driving on the edge of a mountain and about to fall off) I'd say "Talk!" in hopes of everyone distracting me. Ultimately Marge started asking me questions and making me talk which was the perfect ingredient. It was like I could feel my brain splitting in two, the part with the fear got sort of pushed aside by the part that was having to formulate answers to her questions about my condo and neighbors and my job.
The rest of the day was pretty low key. We got off the mountain before a terrific rain storm. We headed into town and had burgers at a rooftop cafe. We were ultimately pushed to a new table because of the rain. And we really enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies for the Olympics.
I'm still not quite over my fear of heights though.
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