colorado day 2: rocky mountain national park

I loved every second (ok well most seconds) of our trip, but Sunday was BY FAR my favorite day! The weather was nice and cool without a trace of humidity. The sky was a beautiful blue with just enough puffy white clouds to make Zach picture happy. But best of all it was our day with Zach's sister Katie and her husband Jered. YAY! They are the reason we convinced ourselves that we just NEEDED to go to Colorado. They have been working on a ranch since mid May and we took it upon ourselves to go to fill their need for friends and family. Such a sacrifice ;)

The Mckennas made it to the hotel about 8 and we headed straight to Estes Park and the entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park for a full day of hiking.


There are TONS of pictures from today and I'm sharing a teensy portion but it's still a lot so I'll just narrate so that you can see a little of what we saw. The park just happened to be free the day we went but was PACKED so we parked in a park and ride lot and took a shuttle to the trailhead for Bear Lake. It was a 256 ft hike (walk) so we started there and kept going.

Our hike was basically a tour of lakes one just as beautiful or more than the next. This is Nymph Lake. It was covered in huge lily pads and our imaginations pictured fairies skittering from one to the other just as I'm sure the namers of the lake did as well.

Dream Lake was next. The trails were much easier this day and much cooler as well.

We reached Laka Hiayaha by noonish and stopped there to eat lunch. This was one of my favorite spots we saw. It's a lake surrounded by mountains and directly behind us was a glacier. There was no real path to it, just a lot of big BIG rocks surrounding and we had to climb over them until we found one we wanted to turn into our picnic table. The temperature dropped a lot while we were there and for a burning hot georgia/alabama girl it felt AMAZING!!

Just G.O.R.G.E.O.U.S!

After lunch we started the hike back down but on a different trail headed to Mills Lake. Zach and Jered felt it necessary to climb almost every rock we came to. Pretty sure that's a guy thing!

I on the other hand felt perfectly fine in my hiker'ish' gear staying on the trial and take pictures of the crazy ppl :)

This is favorite spot number too. Lake Hiayaha was awesome because you felt enclosed by the mountains and hidden away. Mills Lake was just breathtakingly beautiful! The lake was full of calm and peace and there was a great view of Long's Peak and Glacier Gorge. We met two people there were were hiking up to camp for the night at Glacier Gorge which they said is the most difficult permit to get in the whole park. Only one tent is allowed there per night and they open up for new reservations March 1st but by March 2nd they're all gone. He'd been trying for 3 years to get one.

We rested here for quite a long time soaking our worn feet in the freezing cold lake, stealing drift wood from the bottom :) and being chased by chipmunks.
Zach and Jered walked across the fallen trees to the other side on top of the cliffs. Can you see them? Look closely.
See I told you they were there. Amazing how tiny they look compared to the massiveness of the surroundings.
It was tough to get up and start the way back knowing it will be along time before we see this place again, but we finally did it. On the way back we passed Alberta Falls.

We ended this day taking Katie and Jered to dinner in Boulder and then going to Crepe a la Carte for dessert where we lingered for awhile to talk/share/laugh/etc. They are some of our favorite people to have conversation with and we made the most of the time together.

GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT DAY!!