Rocky Mountain National Park
— — the air thins until the colours sharpen.
Not only on a wall.
“Above Estes Park, the road climbs until the spruce gives out and the tundra takes over. Trail Ridge holds the highest paved stretch in any national park in the country, and the air on it carries a different kind of silence. Elk graze in Moraine Park at dusk. Longs Peak holds the western edge like a held note. The pull-offs above treeline are where most cars stop and nobody says much. — from the studio
Rocky Mountain National Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Rocky Mountain National Park covers about 415 square miles of the Front Range in northern Colorado, established by Congress in 1915. Its eastern gateway is Estes Park, its western gateway Grand Lake. Longs Peak rises to 14,259 feet, the only fourteener inside the park. Trail Ridge Road crosses the Continental Divide and runs above 11,000 feet for eleven miles, the highest continuous paved road in the U.S. national park system. The park protects more than 60 named peaks above 12,000 feet and the headwaters of the Colorado River, which begins as a meadow stream in the Kawuneeche Valley.
A third of the park sits above treeline, where the air carries less than two-thirds the oxygen of sea level. The alpine tundra here is one of the southernmost in North America. Cushion plants, moss campion, and alpine forget-me-not flower for a few short weeks in July. Above 11,500 feet, the wind shapes everything: the krummholz at the timberline edge grows sideways, sculpted by winters that bring sustained gusts above 100 mph. The Alpine Visitor Center at 11,796 feet is the highest in the park system, and the walk from its parking lot to the overlook leaves most first-time visitors breathing slowly.
From late May through mid-October, timed-entry reservations are required for most of the park, including the Bear Lake corridor and Trail Ridge Road, in addition to the standard entrance fee. Trail Ridge Road typically opens around Memorial Day and closes with the first heavy snow, often by late October. The Bear Lake shuttle runs from the Park-and-Ride during peak season. Elk bugling draws crowds to Moraine Park in September and October. The Estes Park entrance is roughly 90 minutes from Denver via U.S. 36; Grand Lake is reached from the west on U.S. 34.