Rocky mountain Nat'l Park

Greeley, Colorado

When our older kids were little and we lived in Greeley we used to take them to Rocky Mountain National Park. Since we are visiting Greeley now it seemed appropriate to begin our national park tours with an old favorite. The last time we visited we probably had five children. Maybe six. Our memories of those sleepless years are a little dim sometimes. Either way, they were all six or under. Visiting with children who all walk on their own is a lot easier. I highly recommend it. Kudos to all those people out there hiking with toddlers and wearing babies on their backs! When we first drove into the park I told the kids to look out for wildlife: "elk, moose and big horn sheep," I said, but Fionn was sure I said "big orange sheep" and we all got a good laugh out of that. Also, I am not at all sure there are even moose IN Rocky, it doesn't seem impossible, but also I have never seen one.

I had a plan laid out to see as much of the park as possible in just one day. My plan didn't quite take into account that when we got there at 9 am, the parking lot at Bear Lake would already be full and we would need to park at the park n' ride and wait in line for a shuttle. But that was exactly what happened and that is exactly what we did, so we didn't actually get to Bear Lake until about 10 am, after a relatively harrowing journey in a packed shuttle around narrow, curving mountain roads, courtesy of a park ranger who probably never thought his career would include driving a shuttle bus. 

Bear Lake is the hike we used to take our little kids on. The little kids who are now all grown up. Its a very easy, nice path all the way around the lake and we could do it with toddlers then. So that is where we started this time too. We even had our grown niece with us who used to come here too when we all lived closer. There was still snow in some of the shadier spots along the trail. What you can't see in my pictures is that we were far from alone on these trails, these were very popular trails, hence the necessity of a shuttle.



What we didn't used to do was take the other hike that begins at the same trail head as Bear Lake, but to the left instead of to the right where Bear Lake is. This trail goes up past three more lakes. And even though the park's website also classifies this hike as 'easy,' it is definitely a tad more strenuous than the walk around Bear Lake and though I recall always being a little disappointed that we didn't try for the longer hikes, I can't imagine walking these with little people. The first lake along this trail is Nymph Lake.

When we had left the house that morning, I had decided to wear sandals because Fionnula only had sandals to wear. I thought that if I too wore sandals I would have a good idea if the hiking was becoming too strenuous for her footwear. Well, by the time we reached Dream Lake we were already traversing across some pretty serious snow pack in areas, and in a few spots the trail had been mostly submerged under snow melt too. So we didn't make it to Emerald Lake this time, Dream was as far as we went. I am not real keen on publicly slipping and falling on ice as I did witness at least one other hiker do. I am also not anxious to fall into ice cold water, and at one spot on the trail we could look back at where we had come and see that some of the 'shoreline' we had come across was nothing but snow overhanging the river with a good current rushing under it. My children were much less bothered by this than was I, and were happily launching snowballs into the lake, but still we headed back down.



After our possibly even more harrowing shuttle ride back to our car, a bathroom stop where one little boy loudly informed his mother that he "could see the SEWERS in there!" and our lunch of chips and sandwiches consumed seated on the ground at one of the pull outs along the road, we began part two of our visit: the drive over Trail Ridge Road. There are lots of places along the road to pull off and take in the views, and spot chipmunks, and watch the melting snow pour down the hillside in waterfalls.

But mostly, we headed to the top and the Alpine Visitor's Center, where we were grateful to find bathrooms with actual flushing toilets and sinks. The Alpine Ridge trail ascends up the mountain from the visitor center parking lot. It looks friendly enough, and it is only about a 1/4 mile up, but it was harder on me than I would really like to admit. Thank goodness I at least already live in Colorado and so the altitude change was less for me than for many visitors, or I think I may have passed out cold. In fact I am surprised that people weren't dropping like flies and just rolling, unconscious down the hill. At the top I was amused to hear people who had moments before been huffing and puffing up the hill now gesturing boldly towards peaks in the distance that didn't "look too bad," they were sure they "could probably do that one." Ha! The trip is more than worth the view though. Not to mention the opportunity to take a photo proving the elevation you have obtained!

We drove on a little further after the visitors center and the Alpine Ridge Trail to reach the continental divide, where Liam expressed mild disappointment that there was not a river right there dramatically splitting in two and draining to the west on one side and to the east on the other. I can't quite picture what he was expecting. At the continental divide we turned around and went back over and down trail ridge road, someday I hope we can continue on to Grand Lake, and the west side of the park. Instead of going right back out the entrance we came through that morning, we turned left at Deer Ridge Junction towards Horseshoe Park. It was getting late but I still had one more place I really wanted to visit!

The alluvial fan was amazing! My favorite place we saw in the park that day, so I am really glad we took the little extra time to go around this way. I am pretty partial to water features on my hiking trails, and this did not disappoint. There was no real 'hike' involved. We parked in a parking area and walked across boulder strewn sands, sometimes having to climb right over said boulders, to reach the water which is roaring around a corner and over the side of the mountain. There are, or were, hiking trails in the area but my understanding is that they are currently being reconstructed because of the flood in 2013. But we were content to just sit by the water anyway, dipping feet in a few still areas and listening to the sound of rushing water.

The way out of the park from here passes through meadows full of flowers and prairie dogs and we finally spotted one, single, big horn sheep posing on the mountain for us! I think everyone was suitably impressed, but Fionnula did say "He's not orange, which is sort of disappointing."