Our plan this morning was to take a 9.8 mile roundtrip hike up to Sky Pond. This was a hike that one of my coworkers had suggested we do, and I was pretty pumped to do it! However, we woke up to snow and ice outside. This may not seem too horrible for some mountain hiking, but the temperatures at our campground were below 40 degrees, and we knew the mountains would be much colder. There is also part of the hike that requires some rock climbing at Timberline Falls. The park ranger we had spoken to previously told us to be really careful at that area because it can get icy and slippery and a lot of people get hurt climbing it when the weather isn’t good. Therefore, we sadly decided to cancel this hike.

We kind of bummed around the camper in the morning, both reading books we had brought along (I’m reading the newest Hunger Games book- amazing!). Scott got me out of my book reading and we decided to take a hike to Alberta Falls. This was the beginning part of the trail we would have taken to get to Sky Pond. The weather was so weird all morning! It was sunny, then snowing, then hailing, then sunny again! We had so many layers on and kept taking them off and putting them back on!

The hike was pretty good! We hiked from Bear Lake down to the falls, which meant we had to hike up to get back to the truck. The falls was very pretty, and we could get almost right up to the start of it!

 

Once we finished up our hike, we decided to drive around for a bit. We drove through some of the little viewpoints and areas near our campground, such as Moraine Park and the Alluvial Fan (caused from dams breaking in the past and flooding the canyons and valleys and creating the fan). The weather was still pretty chilly and snowy.

We headed back to our campsite. I pulled out our new hammock, curled up with a blanket and my book, and did some more reading. While this was going on, Scott sat at our picnic table eating lunch. He had a little cup with some chips in it and kept rattling it. I looked over to see that a ground squirrel was intently watching Scott. This ground squirrel ran over to the picnic table, started climbing up the post, AND JUMPED ONTO SCOTT’S LEG.

It was awesome. He freaked (just a little) and the squirrel ran off.

We made dinner, had a fire, and then turned in for the night.

 

The next morning, we woke up early to go on one last hike in RMNP. Our campground has a couple hikes that start from there, so we decided to take one of them. We hiked through to Sprague Lake. This was a really pretty little lake in the Rockies. There was a nice trail around the lake that we decided to walk around. While on this path, a huge elk walked on the path in front of us! We watched it for a few minutes, then snuck off the path and around the elk (they can be dangerous if they feel threatened).

 

After walking around the lake, we made the hike back to camp. Scott is the expert moose spotter, and spotted a moose in the distance as we were walking!

 

We arrived back at camp, packed up the camper, and headed out of the Rockies. We really enjoyed our time at Rocky Mountain National Park. We definitely want to come back and do more exploring- hopefully next time with warmer weather!

Next, we head to the western side of Colorado, arriving at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park!