Rocky Mountain National Park – Our Babymoon

Next week begins the 36th week of my pregnancy, which means that I need to stay within a reasonable radius of our home hospital in case the baby decides to come.  So we decided on a one-night getaway into the mountains as my “last hurrah”.

We made it a wonderful loop trip.  We started out going north on the Peak to Peak Hwy thru Nederland and up to Estes Park.  I thought this formation on the horizon looked a little like Half Dome (in Yosemite).

Dead and dying trees dotted the landscape more and more as we got close to Estes and the National Park.  The Pine Bark beetle devastation was pretty shocking in areas.

Our first stop in Rocky Mountain National Park was a pullover at Beaver Ponds.  I was hoping to see some moose on this trip.

The view from Rainbow Curve always takes my breath away.  Both the river and the roads are winding.

This trip, we decided to hike a short distance along the Ute Trail.  You could hike 8 miles along this trail and end up back at Beaver Meadows.  Would be a great one way hike if you could set up a shuttle.  What a shame the Park’s Hiker Shuttle doesn’t come up Trail Ridge Road.  The Ute Trail at Trail Ridge Road is just about treeline and takes you across a stone-studded field called a “fellfield”.  Great views.

But all this openness meant that the winds were ripping.  And icy cold.  Hard to believe it was in the high 80’s when we left the house this morning.  Here I am trying to brave the winds, and the cold.

I had hoped there’d be some alpine wildflowers still in bloom, but we were too late in the season.  We counted a handful or two, and that was all.

You might want to click on this next picture to see the elk dotting the valley below the Alpine Visitor Center.  This is usually a good spot to see them.  But even with the picture enlarged, they still look like dots!  Last time we visited it was bugling season and we got to watch and listen which was wonderful.  Rutting season begins about now, but we didn’t hear any calls.

Then we continued our drive past the Alpine Visitor Center and down the western side of Rocky Mountain NP.  We hadn’t been over to this side since 2005.

We stopped at Milner Pass to stand on the Divide.

And enjoy the Poudre Lake…

When we reached the Colorado River Trailhead we stopped for another short hike.  The great thing about hiking in RMNP, is that you get such a variety of scenery at every stop.  Wonderful!

Here were some wildflowers along the river.

And our last stop for the day was Coyote Valley.  During our last visit in 2005 we were able to see a moose on this trail.  Again, I was hoping for that rare sighting.  If I remember right, there are about 1200 moose in Colorado, and 500 of them live in the Grand Lake area.  So our odds should’ve been good, but would’ve been better if we were moose hunting at dawn or dusk.  We were too early.

(Note:  within the week, a 2 1/2 yr old toddler was trampled on by a moose outside of Grand Lake – apparently the moose was running away from something else and most likely didn’t see the boy, who recovered.  Moose have very poor eye sight.)

We continued our drive into Grand Lake and spent the night there at one of the town’s motels.  Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in the state – but it’s not that physically large compared to many of the reservoirs and manmade lakes that we have.  It’s still a very pretty setting right on the edge of a small western town.  I enjoy the town’s board plank sidewalks.  Makes me feel like I’m in the old west.

We continued south on Hwy 34 the next morning.  Ideas of a morning hike were passed on due to the clouds and not to mention that neither of us got any sleep the night before and didn’t have much energy for a hike.  Unfortunately my pregnancy is affecting Andy as much as me!

We passed by Lake Granby, which was so scenic with the sailboats in front of a mountain-backdrop.

We continued south on Hwy 40 through the ski town of Winter Park.  I still don’t know how Andy was able to get us down this crazy mountain road.  I was so delirious from lack of sleep, and I know he was too, so how he managed to stay on the road as we wound down the steep road with, oh maybe, a *thousand* 20-mph S-curves that had blinking warning signs around each bend was beyond me. 

But we eventually got back to I-70, and had our grand finale with a drive through Clear Creek Canyon (Hwy 6) before landing back home.

I’m so glad we had our little getaway and I was able to get above treeline again…just one more time before winter settles in…and the baby comes…and I have to figure out how to take the little bambino with me on future hikes :)