The Rocky Mountains
In the summer of 1982, John, Tom, Jack and Bill headed west to do some backpacking in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.

Tom and John drove from the east coast to St. Louis, where they went to a Cardinals-Dodgers series at Busch Stadium and took the obligatory tour of the Budweiser brewery. They then proceeded across Missouri in Tom’s orange Mazda “basketball” and picked up Jack and Billy at the Kansas City airport. Jack and Bill had flown in from Buffalo and were smoking stinky cigars in the airport bar. They managed to get the four campers’ gear and the campers into and on top of the car and headed across Kansas for Estes Park. They did have an encounter with the Denver police, but it was no big deal and they arrived at Rocky Mountain National Park in fine form.
As best the NCMCers can recall, they took two separate backpacking trips in the park, which requires campers to go to a designated backcountry site. It’s a great park, and like many of the big parks out west, offers true solitude in the backcountry, no matter how crowded the roads and pullovers may be.
After leaving the park, they drove straight through to Buffalo on I-80, and didn’t do much sightseeing along the way.

Gallery: Rock Mountains