Rockin' the Rockies

We spent Tuesday night at a church parking lot in Green River, Wyoming. When we were falling asleep, we had the windows open and kept hearing a munching sound (similar to our mouse in the attic at home). We lifted our heads to look out our window and there was a buck, a doe, and a cat eating just outside our motor home!

Bryan woke up at 5am to get driving, while the kids were still asleep. They slowly woke up, while we were on the road, and crawled into bed with me in the bouncy back. We migrated to the front eventually, and we were excited to get a special breakfast at the Denny’s that was attached to the truck stop we got gas at. Whoever decided that Denny’s no longer needs to make waffles made a mistake. We ended up ordering a modge podge of eggs, bacon, toast and sprinkly pancakes to split between all the kids, and no one was really happy with any of it. I will admit, the scrambled eggs cooked in a perfect spongy circle and lukewarm blueberries left much to be desired. When it comes down to it, breakfast is better at home when it comes to kids.

We crossed the Colorado border and as we started to climb into the mountains toward Estes Park, it started getting really curvy and really pretty. They basically build the road on top of the river, so we were just chugging back and forth, with Piper chowing on the gum and mints, me praying she won’t throw up.

When we finally made it to the town of Estes Park, we marveled at the little Bend-like town up so high in these mountains. We chugged past hoards of people eating at “The Slab” and other trendy restaurants with their patio lights and expensive beers.

Pulling up to the Visitors Center at Rocky Mountain National Park, we stood in line to talk to the worker about where the best places for us to visit were. In front of us, the worker was explaining to the little elderly lady in front of us how the park was sold out for the day, and that you have to reserve a time slot online the day before. This poor lady, probably my grandma’s age, had no clue what he was talking about, and I cringed at the fact that there were people pulling up to this amazing national park who would not be able to go in and see it. Thankfully, Bryan had miraculously reserved a spot for us the day before, promptly at 5pm. By 5:03pm, all the spots had been taken. Another woman in line said that she had tried reserving a spot, but had refreshed her browser too late and missed the chance.

We decided to check out Sprague Lake and Bear Lake, two of the easier hikes, which were still iconic. Stopping by the gift shop and information center inside the park at Beaver Meadows, the kids picked out postcards, Bryan bought a hat and I inquired about the Junior Ranger Program. The kids each got their own age-specific booklet and were challenged to finish so that they could earn a badge and become Junior Rangers. Piper turned away from the counter, clutching her booklet and breathed, “I want that badge.”

Judah was more interested in jumping from rock to rock than identifying deer poop, but Cayden and Piper dutifully carried around their booklets and pens to finish their activities.

Our huge motor home was not allowed to park in the upper lots, so we had to rely on the park and ride bus.

 First, we rode to Sprague Lake, a smallish lake with very easy walkways (handicap accessible) and some beautiful views and fun climbing boulders. 

Cayden enjoyed spotting a red-winged blackbird with binoculars on loan from Grandpa Tractor and Piper enjoyed climbing as many boulders as possible and yelling from the top, “Ahoy, matey!” and “Dun dun dun!” The latter of these exclamations was always made extra brave by her standing and raising her hands while balancing on the top and supplying a toothy grin. 

Judah enjoyed the snacks.

While some may consider it proper to stay on the path which neatly skirted the lake, Piper and I couldn’t wait to get off the beaten path.

The path included a little wood bridge over a small waterfall, so naturally, we followed the waterfall downhill to see where it went. Apparently, we weren’t the first to do this, because we found a makeshift log bridge which Piper swore she was NOT going on (she has a weird thing with bridges).

I went across, showing her there was nothing to be afraid of, but she wasn’t convinced until a wobbly Cayden took it on. 

I probably should have been worried about the possibility of hikes with wet shoes or worse, but my caution only extended to Judah, who I knew would fall. He was not happy when we wouldn’t let him cross, but as usual, his anger was short lived and turned around when we spotted goslings up on the real trail. 

The goslings were almost old enough to be ugly teenagers, but not quite. They are very unconcerned with me as they dug around for bugs in the shore grass, while their mom gave me the high head side-eye. I clucked a goose call and they perked right up for a photo, which thoroughly impressed Cayden.

Looping around the lake, we went back to our bus stop, back to the park and ride and then hopped on another bus headed to Bear Lake. We had done very little research on Rocky Mountain National Park (so little that we thought the national park was called Estes Park), so we were very surprised to see signs about ice on the pathways and people wielding impressive walking sticks with spiky ends. Before venturing around Bear Lake, we spotted a park ranger and asked if the kids could get their badges for completing their booklets. The park ranger asked the kids questions, harder ones for Cayden, down to “what do you see that is white on top of the mountain?” for Judah. All three got separately “sworn in” as Junior Park Rangers, promising to never feed wildlife, clean up their trash, etc. 

After awarding them their badges, the park ranger made them stand up on the bench and hollered at everyone around to congratulate our three newest Junior Park Rangers with a round of applause. Cayden couldn’t get down fast enough, asking me, “Why’d she have to do THAT?” Piper was equally diving out of the limelight, while Judah (who had completed zero of the actual packet required) proudly pulled at the badge on his chest as proof and proclaimed, “I’m a Junior Park Ranger!”

Heading up the trail, we instantly noticed old patches of snow to traverse. The kids couldn’t get enough of the dirty, slushy stuff, throwing chunks at each other, barely keeping their balance. Piper reveled in getting as far off the path as possible – the more snow the better. We took a dinner break up on a ledge and I set up the timer on the camera for our first family picture of the trip.

Piper and I ventured off the path again, up a rocky ledge and back down. Judah howled because we wouldn’t let us come, and Cayden frowned, wondering if it was safe. 

Bryan just shook his head and kept walking, knowing we would catch up eventually. They did stop to wait for us at a huge pile of rocks, which of course we also HAD to climb.

 I was enamored by the aspen trees growing right out of the huge piles of granite boulders. 

Somehow, their twisted roots found a way.

Along the path there were markers with bear p

aw prints on them, marking how far we had come on the trail. At one of the first ones, Piper asked what the numbers meant.
“That means there were 35 bears sighted here,” Bryan joked.
From that point on, Piper marveled at how many bears were spotted on this trail. Cayden and I marveled that she didn’t notice that there were less and less “bear sightings” as we circled the lake., and that dad might be pulling her leg.

We spent the night of June 9 at Estes Park Campground at Mary’s Lake. 

The next day (our 15^th wedding anniversary), we didn’t have to do any driving! Instead, we had a waffle breakfast (much better than Denny’s), played at the playground (right next to our site – look at that view!), 

checked out Mary’s Lake. 

Mary's Lake

We could tell Mary’s Lake was man-made, with some sort of power plant and a strange waterfall that pounded into the lake at regular intervals, rather then a constant flow. Curious, we looked up more information about this lake and found out it is a dike reservoir that is part of a HUGE water system of reservoirs that bring water out of Rocky Mountain National Park to the surrounding counties, which did not naturally have water. This project, called the Colorado-Big Thompson project took many decades to take shape and met much opposition from National Parks supporters, but without it, our little campground would not exist. Amazingly, a huge part of the project was tunneling through the Rocky Mountains from two ends, meeting in the middle. After over three years of drilling and reinforcing the tunnel, crews met in the middle on June 10, 1944, exactly 77 years ago, to the day, that we enjoyed the water it would eventually pipe in to create the Mary’s Lake Reservoir (1948). The engineering of this tunnel was amazing. When the two tunnels met under the Continental Divide, the difference in alignment could be covered by a coin! Breaking through the Divide required removal of 308,503 cubic yards of earth, and installation of more than 4.2 million pounds of steel and 124,411 cubic yards to line 13 miles of tunnel, according to a Bureau of Reclamation report in 1996.

All of this didn’t mean much to our kids, who simply adventured around, with Piper climbing the red rock formations and Cayden teaching Judah how to (somehow) skip the jagged rocks across the lake. We decided that the lake’s lack of sand made it not a good place to swim, so we headed back to the tiny campground pool the kids had been itching to try out. On the way, we stopped to check out the little campground store. While we were debating whether or not we really needed a whisk for the rest of the trip, we heard Judah exclaim, “Are these bear whackers??”

He was grabbing at a barrel full of walking sticks with bears silhouettes printed on the top, desperate for a bear whacker. The bear whacker did not make the cut, but we did leave the store with two (the kids couldn’t agree) magnets.

After swimming, we grabbed some ice cream from the little store, where Judah had earlier determined there were “Fat Boy” ice cream sandwiches. After checking out the other options, though, Judah deemed the Fat Boys to be “Little Fat Boys” and thus not worthy of his choice. I told him we already have a little fat boy, poking him in the ribs.

We ended the day just hanging around the campsite, Piper making a movie of Judah on her iPad and Cayden and I walked over to check out the wetlands. 

S’mores with no chocolate rounded out the evening, with Judah proudly solo roasting his marshmallow perfectly for the second straight night. Cayden promptly burned  first mallow and Piper made Bryan roast hers.

The wind had picked up throughout the day and so we battened down the hatches and settled in for night #4.