Six months after our wedding, I was drafted into the Army. Shortly thereafter, in June 1967, I was sent to Vietnam. When I returned home one year later, my wife and I decided we needed to get away by ourselves to get "reacquainted."
We went to Rocky Mountain National Park. After the low altitude and high temperatures of Vietnam, I had difficulty catching my breath and keeping warm, but we thoroughly enjoyed the park. Its calm, quiet solitude was just what I needed after Vietnam, and we both gained a greater appreciation of the natural world and our national parks.
Since then, we have become national park "junkies." By the time of our 50th wedding anniversary, we had been to 43 of the 59 national parks, several of them multiple times. We look forward to visiting some of our "missing parks" over the years to come.
Sincerely,
Rocky Mountain National Park
This dramatic landscape of towering mountains and alpine lakes encompasses more than 265,000 acres - 95% of which are designated wilderness. With this intentional focus on protecting this unique landscape, there are few developed infrastructure areas in the park, which leads to traffic problems in areas including the Bear Lake Road Corridor and right off Trail Ridge Road. Alpine tundra also encompasses approximately 1/3 of the park. Alpine tundra is a fundamental and fragile resource, which requires park managers to give this ecosystem increased attention for protection.
State(s): Colorado
Established: 1915
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Greetings from Rocky Mountain National Park
Finding Our Way Back—Through America’s National Parks. We first met in 1986, while attending a U.S. Navy A School on Treasure Island in San Francisco, California. We didn’t officially date, but we spent hours talking—about everything and nothing—and shared a simple Sunday afternoon walk along the boardwalk, splitting a blueberry…
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