Rocky Mountain National Park!

Finally wrapping up Andy and Karri's trip to see us, we drove out to Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday the 3rd. The park is about an hour and a half from us, on a beautiful drive through the Big Thompson River Canyon. Unfortunately, as we drove into the canyon, the clouds turned black and we even had a bit of hail fall. But the sky looked blue ahead, so we continued on....and it was worth it!

Here we are just outside the park!

Andy and Karri planned to stay and camp for a few nights, so we stopped at the Visitor's Center for some useful information, and then headed up Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest continuously paved road in the U.S. ! The highest point is over 12,200 feet elevation. Along the way we stopped for a picnic lunch and at several turnoffs to get some amazing pictures!

This was a shot from the side of the road about 5 minutes into the park. You don't have to travel far in the park to see some great sights.

After stopping for lunch, there was a great turnoff in a switchback part of the road that let you see mountains in a 270 degree view. The tallest peak in this picture (partially obscured in the clouds) is Longs Peak, which is the tallest peak in the park and can be seen from Fort Collins.


The next stop had one of the best rainbows we've ever seen! As we pulled into the parking spot, we saw 30+ people pointing and taking pictures of something, and when we got out the car, we knew why...there was a huge rainbow "growing" across the valley. As the clouds moved through, the rainbow started just at the left side of this picture, and grew towards the right until it crossed as much of the valley as we could see. What a sight.

From this point, it was up, up, up into the tundra. You might say we were a bit high up at this point, after looking at the next picture.

There's another visitor's center and giftshop just after the highest point on the road (and we could feel the thin air as we stopped to shop for a minute). We didn't see a sign on the road indicating the actual highest point, but we found this sign.




On the way back from the Alpine Visitor's Center, we stopped for short hike on the Ute Trail.




With views of mountains, the blue sky, and even some elk, it was a very neat experience walking around at close to 12,000 feet. On the way back, I scampered up some rocks for a better view:




Whitney's at the bottom of the rocks on the right, and Andy and Karri are back on the trail somewhere in the middle of the picture.



After the hike, the black clouds rolled back in and we were glad to be off the trail, and headed back down below the tree line. As we were just about to leave the park, we found a few elk enjoying the park as well.



Whitney and I bid goodbye and headed back to Fort Collins while Andy and Karri enjoyed the park for two more days. What a fun weekend!

Next time we'll mention a couple fun things we've up to the past few weeks and get caught up to today!