Rocky Mountain National Park

Our last stop before heading back to Denver to regroup and return home was Rocky Mountain National Park.

It's the park closest to Denver, so it's the park we've visited the most, but each time we go, there's always something new.

My parents live only an hour or so from the west entrance, the quiet side of the park.

So we started there, with a picnic in the rain and a short hike with my mom between showers.

We then drove over to the other side of the park, via Trail Ridge Road, and took another short between-rain-showers hike between on the tundra.

When I'm in the desert, I love the desert best, and when I'm in the mountains, I love the mountains best.

The next day the sun came out and we went on a bigger hike on a trail that led to several lakes.

It turned out to be one of the most popular hiking areas in the park and we shared the trail with tons of people.

I made an experiment of making eye contact with and saying "Hi," to everyone we passed, to see who would say hi back.

I was surprised by how few friendly hikers there were (maybe they were all just out of breath from the altitude).

But there was one small group who had once lived in Maine and insisted I sounded Canadian, which was pretty funny.

The farther we hiked, the more we left the crowds behind and soon we had the trail nearly to ourselves.

On our last day we packed up our beautiful campsite--the one I never wanted to leave--and took a short hike to a nearby lake.

E found this piece of bone--part of an animal's pelvis, maybe--that looked like a miniature ram's head.

We then piled into our overloaded black car and began our hot and humid and kind of sad way home.

Vacation

We just returned from a seventeen-day, 5,760-mile road trip to and around Colorado. I have about 800 photos to sort through and edit. I think I'll dole them out slowly here over the next couple of weeks--I'm sure they're much more interesting than anything that will go on in my real life during that time, and that way I can relive the trip vicariously through my own photos. 

This one was taken on our last day in Rocky Mountain National Park. I did not want to leave...the rain cloud we had been towing around the state had just come untethered and we finally had a great campsite with no RVs nearby, and amazing view of the mountains, and a hiking trail yards away. I could easily have stayed for the 14 days allowed, gazing at Long's Peak and breathing the pine-scented air.