Tuesday, November 12, 2019: Estes Park

We drove up to Estes Park yesterday after visiting with mom. We checked into a two bedroom condo at the Stanley Hotel. We spent the evening relaxing and watching the movie Hotel Mumbai. Maria is booked to stay in the same hotel at the end of her final segment on the World Cruise. The movie is based on the actual terrorist attack on the Taj hotel in 2008. It was a vividly horrifying movie. I offered to move Maria to a different hotel, but she said she wanted to stay with the Taj Hotel.

We had some heating issues with our condo during the night and reported them to the hotel. We then drove up into the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was beautiful clear day. The temperature was in the 50's and we were able to drive up to the 10,000 foot elevation before we found the road closed ahead.

We saw NO wild life at all, no elk, no deer, no nothing. The only animal "life" we observed was road kill.

We drove back down to Estes Park and, on the way out of town, we stopped at the Sombreo Stables (https://www.sombrero.com/). Maria told the nice young lady that she wanted to "interact" with some horses. Maria seems to have a reservation regarding horses. She was unequivocal in that she was not going to ride a horse today. The lady brought two horses out to meet us, Harry and Ethel. Harry was 15 years old and Ethel 10 years. After the "interaction", Maria seemed open to the idea of going for a ride, as long as the horse did not run.

We then met D&D for lunch at the Bent Fork. I had the lobster mac & cheese, Maria had some tacos.

Before heading back to Estes Park, we stopped by a grocery and picked up some flowers, cookies and hand lotion for mom. When we got to her place, she had just laid down for a nap, but she woke up when we entered. We did not have her hearing aids installed but she liked the flowers and almost fell back asleep when Maria rubbed the lotion into her hands. We then gave her a cookie which she liked and ate about half before falling asleep. We quietly left her in peace. I did promise her that I would return to see her between Christmas and when I leave on my world cruise.

When we started the hour long drive back to Estes Park, Maria called the Stanley and asked if they had fixed the heating issue in our condo. The person she talked with assured her it would be fixed by the time we arrived.

We arrived and found no one had even been to the condo that day, let alone resolve any of the several issues we told them about. This prompted a unpleasant discussion with the front desk. Soon afterwards, a nice young man arrived. He resolved the heating issue, replaced the burned out light bulbs, but could not get the ice maker working. Instead, he brought us a large bucket of ice.