Megan’s Take
Today was our last full day in Rocky Mountain National Park, and we made the most of it. We had one last round of shuttle bus rides for the kids, going up the Bear Lake corridor to Alberta Falls. It was a relatively short 1.6 mile hike with a lot of scenic value.
Emilia and Emmett enjoyed rock scrambling as usual – probably more than they enjoyed the actual beautiful waterfall views.
Then we went to Sprague Lake. The kids were initially complaining about needing a rest. Instead of pushing them in the stroller for the 0.7 mile easy loop around the lake, we decided to try a lunch break. They had just eaten a bunch of snacks on the previous trail, so I didn’t think they would eat much. But we were very surprised when they ate a full lunch at 10:30 am. After that, they were powered up and ready to zip around the lake on their little legs. Emmett practically jogged.
From there, we traveled over Trail Ridge Road to the west side again. We had missed it the other day due to going to the urgent care. This time, we stopped at the Holzwarth Historic Site, which was about 1 mile, and visited the buildings. The kids, especially Emilia, were more interested than I expected. Emilia was curious about all the buildings and wanted to go in the ones that were closed up or off limits. She is starting to absorb lots of general knowledge about the world, and over the course of the trip, we’ve noticed her wanting to be “big” and do “big kid” things.
We had a short but pleasant stroller stroll along the Colorado River trail
before dinner in Grand Lake, followed by ice cream back in Estes Park. We walked along the main street through downtown Estes Park, and Phil and I agreed that we like it more than other tourist towns. If we’re in the area and want a low-key experience, we can escape the touristy downtown stuff through side roads and routing around it, but if we’re in the mood, there are plenty of restaurants, ice cream and souvenir shops, and fun things to pick from. You can choose your own adventure.
Phil’s Take
We experienced the longest wait to get into the park this morning at no longer than 10 minutes. We were remarking at how there could be worse places to sit in traffic.
The kids were excited about their second to last shuttle ride of the trip (most likely), though the expressions on their faces don’t really show it. They were too busy fighting over who got the window seat.
The amount of falls along the first half of the Alberta Falls trail made it clear the falls we were approaching were going to be bigger.
It is a very pretty hike through the woods that I would highly recommend. The Alberta Falls themselves contain the highest drop of any of the falls we’ve seen in the trip. You can see in the video I posted in Megan’s section that there is a large amount of water going through here. A park ranger we saw yesterday on a hike to falls told us that we’re just past the peak on water running off of the mountains, so this is not quite as much water flow as it got this year. The trail was also not nearly as crowded as other trails in the Bear Lake area.
The Sprague Lake trail greets you with a spectacular view right from the beginning, although the largest of the mountains are behind you.
There’s a boardwalk that leads out to a short pier where you can get a great panorama of the area.
As we were walking along, Emmett and Emilia got to see a small family of geese heading into the water.
The best shot of Sprague Lake is the featured image at the top of this article, taken from the opposite side of the lake from where the trail starts the loop. As you can barely see, there are a few fly fishermen in the water. The lake is pretty shallow on the side where the loop starts, and they’re standing quite far out into the lake.
On our drive west along Trail Ridge Road, we decided to stop at the Lava Cliffs Overlook again so the kids could play in the snow one last time. There was a little bit of a snowball fight. What struck me a lot here is how much colder it was here than Sprague Lake, which is where we got in the truck.
We didn’t stop again until Medicine Bow Curve, where we happened upon a herd of elk. There were 3 young ones in the herd playing as they slowly grazed northward.
Elk and deer are not new to us, so it’s not something that we’d normally make a big deal about, but here we were able to capture the whole herd and they weren’t immediately scared off. You never see deer in this kind of quantity in Indiana acting calmly enough that you can observe them. While we were watching them, one of them encountered some sort of garbage that it tried to eat. I caught this funny picture of it after it apparently didn’t like the taste.
It was a good teaching moment for the kids to show that trash is bad for wildlife and we should try to keep things clean.
It is quite clear that wildlife is foreign to tons of visitors, because they do quite stupid things blocking traffic when they see a single animal, as we experienced on our way out of the park. There are clearly visible signs in many places that state plainly that stopping is only allowed in pullouts. The last such experience, was because of this guy, which is the largest buck we saw the whole trip with his large set of antlers in velvet.
It’s not a good shot, but it was taken while we were driving and not blocking the road like other people were.
One of my favorite views of the park is of Milner Pass, but you can’t really get a good shot of it. There is no place to pull over, so all we could get is one while the truck was moving. The lighting angle here is horrible for glare, so the picture isn’t great and doesn’t do it justice.
On the other side of that lake is the Continental Divide, where water falling on the far side goes to the Pacific Ocean and water on the near side goes to the Atlantic Ocean.
Our first stop on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park was the Holzwarth Historic Site, situated in the valley between two mountain ranges. You have to cross a beautiful meadow to get to it on a half mile trail.
About two thirds of the way across the meadow, you cross the Colorado River, just 10 miles downstream from where it forms. It’s so little here, but it grows to become one of the most powerful and landscape-changing forces there is.
It’s somewhat fitting that our last full day in the national parks sees the beginning of the Colorado River and the first encounter of it was at the Grand Canyon. We managed to hit all of the major attractions around that river, in order, from furthest downstream to furthest upstream. That wasn’t planned, but it is an interesting coincidence.
While we were touring the old buildings, we encountered an old washboard and ringer. Megan was explaining to the kids how people did laundry back then. I don’t think she would ever give up her washing machine and dryer.
I don’t ever recall seeing a tent house before, half tent, half building. I guess if you need to construct buildings cheaply and quickly, this’ll do in a pinch.
The Coyote Valley trail takes you along the Colorado River as Megan mentioned, but it’s mostly about the landscape around it. There are some interpretive signs, which are interesting, and I was able to capture the best panorama of the valley about half way down the trail, which I included in Megan’s section.
Not much further from the Coyote Valley trail the landscape turns more sad. There was a fire in 2020 that burned a huge section of the park that miraculously wasn’t visible to us in any other area of the park than the stretch of road from just south of Coyote Valley to Grand Lake.
I know fire is part of the circle of life in forests like this, but it still makes you wonder how much worse we humans making it.
The trip back east through the park was bittersweet. It’s the last time we’ll be in the mountains here in Rocky Mountain National Park, and it was the end of the last full day in any national park this trip. I could pick any number of pictures to show what we’re leaving behind and it still wouldn’t do it justice. This one was taken while we were driving, since we didn’t stop.
After we got back to Estes Park, the kids were able to finally see the taffy machines running in a couple of shops. They were mesmerized.
All of the pictures from today are in this gallery:
