Daily Didactic Waking early, in order to get on a waiting list for a campsite tonight, the weather was still impressively wet. By 9:00, when the park ranger came by to tell us there was a spot available, it was clear that it was going to be a very rainy day and that our campground seemed to be emptying. We abandonded the idea of hiking and jumped in the line out of the park, slowing down long enough in Estes Park to grab a cup of coffee, and headed down Highway 7 generally toward Gunnison. There was low cloud cover, so we didn't see many of the fourteeners that everyone around here talks about. We'll have to settle for what we have back home... The drive was spectacular without the mountain tops. Not too suprisingly, the Rocky Mountains are chock full of cool rock formations, ponds, clear rivers and a pretty diverse collection of trees. We wound up and down the narrow Highway 7 until we reached Evergreen, where the road widened and speed picked up a bit. It was also around Evergreen that the "check battery" light began blinking on and off. Initially it looked a lot like a loose wire. Eventually, however, it began to predictably light up whenever the bus reached about 2800 RPM. Brian pondered the relationship between batteries and RPM for most of the rest of the drive, apparently for no particular reason as our charger says the battery was at 100% when we hit Gunnison a few hours later. The rest of the drive was equally scenic, crossing South Park (curiously not an animated town, but a big alpine plain) and climbing very very slowly up and over Monarch Pass in the heaviest rain we have driven in on the whole trip. We stopped for the night at the Gunnison KOA, to secure electricity for the charger and showers for ourselves, still trying to decide whether we are hiking in the Rockies or heading for the desert.