7/6 - Friday - Pioneer Village

We toured Pioneer Village until about noon. After noon we left Minden and continued on our trip. Just a short drive down I-80 was The Great Platte River Road Archway. We did not know about this before we left home, some folks at the campground recommended we stop there. Here is the link.

http://www.archway.org/

The arch is a lively, interactive, walk through multimedia museum about the westward migration of pioneers across the U.S. We liked it. It was easy for the kids to relate to and kept their attention. It takes about an hour or so to walk through it. It was a bit pricy for the amount of time that you spend in it but it was well done.

The remainder of the day we used driving to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. We camped at Estes Park Campground, which is located just outside the park entrance in the town of Estes Park, for three nights.

http://www.estesparkcampground.com/

We really liked this campground. We decided to stay here because the national park campground did not have showers. The campgrounds in the park are very nice and do have flush toilets, but no showers. At Estes Park Campground, they cater to the tent and pop-up crowd. It is not an RV park. The sites are small and the area is wooded. The roads in the campground are narrow and mainly on a slope so it was not the easiest to get the trailer in and set up. The sites were closer than you’d find in a state park but much better than an RV type park. They have electric and water sites but no RV hook-ups. The bathrooms were clean and well maintained. Its location was very close to town and the park entrance. You could also hike directly into the park from the campground as it borders it and trails start right at the campground entrance.