There are no bears in the sky: National Parks trip, day 10

It may be almost two weeks home from the trip, but I still recall how comfy the bed was at our La Quinta in Estes. I don't know if it was just average but our beds for the last week and a half had been so bad that it seemed heaven-sent by comparison? It doesn't even matter. That sleep was such a great sleep. We had to get up kind of early, we had to be at the park between 8-10am for our timed entry pass. We got up at 7, had breakfast, and headed out at 8. On our way through Estes, I was delighted by an elk that I initially thought was a statue.

Breakfast time at Estes Thai for elk!

We had a pretty light day on board, we figured today would be the best day to run around and gather all of our stamps for our books. I had only one demand of the visit to RMNP: we had to do the lakes loop. It is my favorite hike at Rocky Mountain National Park....by default, really. It's the only hike I've done in the park. I've told Derek several times that my biggest aggravation while living in Colorado was not really having people who wanted to go do Colorado stuff with me. I had friends here and there recommend things, like my girlfriend Anali wanted to do the incline together but I was far from interested in the incline. I talked Dan into going to RMNP with me once, but it was snowed over and we just ran around in the show for a couple of hours (admittedly a very fun time). Kristen was the first person to suggest a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park to do an actual trail, and while I recall that day as very fun (I fell in a river, I tore my shirt off in front of a bunch of strangers while screaming about a bug, I met a couple of geologists and learned about glacier movement AND geocaching...), Kristen and I were at very different fitness levels and I don't think I treated her very well about it. I wasn't derogatory to her or anything, I just left her behind to take the trail at MY pace, and then I would go bounding back to her to do some of it with her, and then I'd go rushing off again. Not very cool to leave my friend in the dust like that when she had suggested we do the trail together. I was able to do local hikes, my friend Ian and I would go up to Rainbow Falls and Garden of the Gods pretty constantly, though a lot of that was mostly about stealing the mayorship of these places on Foursquare from each other. The bathroom at Garden of the Gods was VERY hotly pursued...that and the main office of Focus on the Family (to be funny, not because we were fans of their policies or anything). Anyway, all of that to say I didn't get to do a lot of Colorado things when I lived in Colorado, and catching up each time I've visited since leaving has been a treat. 

Back on track. The Lake Loop at Rocky Mountain National Park was on the docket for our second full day, mostly because getting there early helps you beat the crowds. It is THE most popular hike in the park, and if you get there after like...8am, the lot is full for the day, and the trail is packed. I wisely put that on the plan for our sunrise day where our timed entry ticket was for 5am. 

Ok. So we get into the park, and we make our first stop at the first visitor's center. I was delighted to see mugolio being sold, made from all the different kinds of pine and firs at the park. I bought a bottle for my dad, Rhyann, and Derek's mom (even though I can make this shit myself), chatted with the lady behind the counter about it (she told me she had been eyeballing it and was very curious about it and she seemed to listen very happily when I told her I've made it, and how to make it), got our stamps, and headed off to our first actual stop: Sprague Lake. I wanted to do some of the easier hikes, just knock a bunch of RMNP hikes off of my list. Sprague Lake was a loop that was a little over a mile, and sadly it was the only really little hike in the park. I guess aside from the lookouts we check out later, but those don't really count. 

Obviously the drive from Moraine Visitor's Center to Sprague was delicious. I mean. It's the Colorado Rockies. Not much is prettier, even on its ugliest day. 

We said hello to some road turkey:

and continued winding our way through the Bear Lake corridor. Now, something I didn't really know about Rocky Mountain National Park, which is going to sound like it should be a given...it's fucking HUGE. Like, it isn't Yellowstone huge, but it's large. Derek and I didn't quite realize the task we had ahead of us in getting all of our stamps from all of the visitors centers, as they are spread out allllllllll across the park. Hitting up the first one was pretty easy, and we figured on the way to Sprague, we would hit up the second one at the other entrance to the park on the east side. Unfortunately when we got there, we discovered that it was outside of the park, meaning we'd have to leave and come back in. But even with timed entry, if you leave, you can't come back in until after 2pm. So we turned around and pushed off that visitor center stamp for later in the day. Back on track to Sprague Lake!

We could not have asked for better weather, honestly.

It was a wonderfully crisp Colorado fall day, no clouds, slight breeze, all views. We parked at Sprague and honestly, I cannot recall if Derek and I decided after the fact that we should use Sprague as our sunrise spot, or if we wanted to check out Sprague to see if it was viable for sunrise...I actually think it was me who pushed Sprague for sunrise. Derek wanted to do the hike up to Emerald for sunrise, but I didn't think that was necessarily a viable plan. I mean...yes, we could have done it, but even Derek later conceded that Sprague was the right call. Emerald Lake would have been beautiful, but it would have been a pain in the fucking tits to get everything up there in the dark. Even though Derek bought us great headlamps. 

Sprague was really, really pretty. Like, even the plain ol' beginning of the trail before you could see the lake was pretty.

And then you get to see the lake, and it's even prettier.

It was a really gentle loop around the lake, and when we got to the other side, I was inspecting the area like crazy, trying to find the perfect place for sunrise. I scoped out several little spaces for me to post up in the morning for sunrise photos, took pictures of each of them, and marked them in my memory. That was made quite a bit easier, because there was a rushing stream right behind the area where all of my spots were, and I figured that would make it so much easier for me to find in the dark. 

There's no way I could get lost with this as my north star, she said from the past, with future her knowing full well she super duper DID. 

Here were the places I had as my contenders for a sunrise spot:

Each spot had varying degrees of interesting foreground, but the lake and the peaks were present in all of them. I was going to winner winner chicken dinner this sunrise, fuck you Schwabacher Landing! I chatted with a couple of other visitors who were remarking on Derek's lenses (he brought all of his gear with him, I just scoped out with my cell phone and my eyeballs) and talked about sunrise photos, and we all joked about having too much executive dysfunction to be in charge of sunrise and sunset. Those older ladies were a treat. On the way back to the car, we got very involved in figuring out what kinds of trees we were looking at, I guessed Colorado Blue Spruce and Derek said I was wrong, but guess who was right? ME. It was me who was right. I showed him the little cones you can make mugolio out of and thought about yanking some, but decided not to.

We got back in the car after debating on whether or not to do the other little hike at Sprague (we did not do it) and kept ascending. It is quite a long drive to the alpine visitor center, and I don't think I had ever gone that far up into the park before. I think when Dan and I went, we took the alluvial trail route (closed to visitors this go around), when Kristen and I went we just did the lake loop, and when Derek and I went with my dad and Caryn, we drove back down after checking out Bear Lake. So Derek and I were traveling through a part of the park I have never, ever seen. I remarked on this to Derek, and he corrected me that actually, WE had done this drive together before. 

Oh no, he's right. We had. On one of our next stops, I did recall looking down into that exact part of the valley, just in winter, and it had been beautiful, but the road DID close and there was a point where we could go no further, so I still got to go with Derek into places of the park I hadn't ever seen, I was just wrong about the starting point of that section. Anyway, here's some views. 

I had gotten my junior ranger booklet at Beaver Meadow Visitor Center (which I forgot to mention us doing because it was largely inconsequential) and one of the things you have to do is take note of animal sign, like scat. So when Derek and I stopped to check out the beaver dam area, I was delighted to find two honkin' turds at the base of the dammed up creak. 

Bet you thought this was going to be poops.

There weren't any beavers present, sadly. But it was a very pretty little stop off, and it DID help me check off the section in my junior ranger booklet about spotting and identifying the shits of local fauna. Who knows whether I did it properly or not. 

Our next stop off was the highest I had previously been in the park. 

We got out to take some overlook photos, I sat on the wall, and about seven thousand chipmunks absolutely ran amok over my body. They were the boldest little varmints this side of anywhere, and I was annoyed because this means that people are feeding them. Derek told me he saw the guy next to us feeding the chipmunks his food, and I was irritated that Derek didn't point that out to me or say anything to this guy about it. The park states pretty clearly all over that you do not feed the animals, and that's as much for your safety as it is for theirs. They SHOULD be afraid of us, they are wild animals. I know they're cute, but don't fucking feed wild animals. They need a healthy dose of fear of us. Is it adorable to have them run all over my hands and my camera while I'm trying to take pictures? Yes. But it would be much cuter if they were allowed to stay wild. People are so fucking irresponsible. 

I tried in vain for about fifteen minutes to get a photo of a Stellar's Jay. Derek got a great set of them while I was grabbing my lens, and by the time I got back with my 100-400, the jay had fucked right off into oblivion, never to be seen again. I lost patience after about 15 minutes, so we hopped back in the car and continued the drive to Alpine visitor center. 

It gets VERY different when you get to the summit area of a mountain. You're not longer in an alpine forest, you're in a tundra. It's all bare and craggy and the wind is sharp and the air is thin and it is amazing. 

We stopped at one of the overlooks....I intended to get the map out and name every place we stopped, but you know what? I'm not gonna. Because I'm just not. We stopped at one of the overlooks before the alpine visitor center because you can see every single peak, and it is stunning. 

Do you see any tarns?

To make it clear, Derek and I were in very typical Colorado fall clothes for hiking in the mountains. We were wearing shorts and short sleeved tops. I had on the least amount of clothing, Derek at least had a jacket, and previously, we had been fine. It was maybe in the high 50s, the weather was really nice. But it gets nippy up in the higher elevations, and I made it about halfway to the lookout point before I had to turn around a find a jacket. Derek offered me his, but I said no because then HE'D be cold. So I wandered back to the car to find my jacket, which had eluded my earlier attempt to find it, but I knew it was in there somewhere. In the parking lot, I was reminded just how fucking differently Coloradans are built. There were several tour vans up here, and on the way out to the trail to the lookout, I had noticed one such leader of a tour group sitting with a much older man, coaching him on breathing. He (the older man) looked to me like he had been stricken with a bit of altitude sickness, which is no fun, and it put him out of commission while the rest of the tour walked to the lookout. On my way back to the car to find my jacket, I saw the same leader of the tour van sitting at the front of the van smoking a fucking cigarette. 

A cigarette. At almost 12,000 feet up. Coloradans are a singular breed, man. I haven't been a smoker in eleven years, and I remarked to Derek how it's wild to me in retrospect that I used to run five miles every day as a person who smoked 5-10 cigarettes a day on and off for the seven years I lived in Colorado. I was a non-smoker for four of those years, non-consecutively, but I was definitely a smoker when I was a runner. Running five miles a day at 6,035 feet elevation AND being a smoker is wild to me now. I hike three miles a day four days a week, cycle ten miles a day four days a week, and weightlift four days a week, and I was a little winded walking to that lookout at 11,000 some odd feet....and that dude was just smoking a cigarette, cool as you please. Man I fucking miss Colorado. 

You can't even see the lookout point from the parking lot.

It took me FOREVER to find my jacket. I may have mentioned our car was stuffed to the gills wth snacks and coolers and blankets in case we got stuck on the drive and needed to keep ourselves alive for a day or two (you never know at thise time of year!), so I had to dig around for about fifteen minutes to find my jacket. By the time I found it, I saw Derek was almost back to the car, so I opted to not head back out to the lookout and would instead have to live vicariously through his photos. Why, he asked me. Because I have to fucking pee. 

There were big ol' stripes of virga, one of my favorite things to see in the sky, and I wish I hadn't had to pee so badly so I could have taken a proper photo of it. 

Our next stop would be the alpine visitor center, we didn't pull off at the mud volcano side wall stop...I don't remember what exactly it was called, I think mud and volcano are both in the name, somehow, but I did snag a picture of the view down into the valley from that pull off.

I had to pee so badly that I forgot to get a picture of what the alpine visitor center looks like, but it is obviously the highest up of them all, and I say it's obvious because it's the vistor center with the least amount of pizazz, though I'm sure it took the most amount of logistics and work to accomplish. I appreciate you, NPS!

Winter season meant the indoor toilets were closed until late spring, so the line to potty at the outdoor facilities was long. We finally got to potty, I went back to the car and grabbed my junior ranger booklet to turn in, found a ranger inside, and got sworn in to the Rocky Mountain National Park Junior Rangers. They didn't have a badge available, but they did have a sticker, which I happily took and slapped onto my water bottle. 

Of course, our important reminder:

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention how fucking disappointing these tribal and land acknowledgements are when these areas go out of their fucking way to exclude indigenous history from information centers. The "firsts" of colonizers are highlighted, but the idea that indigenous people beat them to the punch is mentioned nowhere. The history of their relationship with the land is erased. Land acknowledgements mean fuck all if you otherwise keep the people invisible from their own connections and roots and the barbaric pushouts and genocides that gives us access to places like national parks. Dirty work, NPS. 

Derek and I walked through the information section and read about all of the birds and animals that live this far up the mountain. At the end of the information area was a poll you could participate in (with marbles!) and then a white board that asked vistors a question: What is the cutest animal at Rocky Mountain National Park? I knew the answer, it wasn't even a contest.

Guess which one is my answer!

ME. I'M the cutest animal at RMNP.

The NPS gift shop was very small, and I wondered where the little coffee shop was that's reknowned for its cinammon rolls. 

It isn't over here!

Turns out it's in the building next door. Derek and I wandered over and found the little cafe tucked away into the gaudiest gift shop we've been in yet. I would say about 40% of the shit for sale was AI Slop products, and the rest of it was overpriced ali express overstock. There was a tiny corner hawking what the signs said were local artists, and I almost bought a whittled tree made out of local pine, but for 40 dollars, I turned my nose up at it and decided to make one myself. There was a winter where Derek and I carved out a bunch of animals from wood, I think my dad may still have the deer I did for him. I'm sure I can manage a tree. The cinnamon rolls were sold out, the place was packed to the gills, and I had a panic attack and had to leave. I will say my POTS was triggered so much more at elevation. I may miss Colorado, but I'm not sure my body would be all that happy with me if we moved back there. I went back to the car and waited for Derek, who was pretty much right behind me. It was a really gaudy gift shop, not much for him to gawk at after a quick stroll through. 

From there we had the loooooooong drive down to the furthest visitor center for our second to last stamp of the day. The weather looked it was starting to shift a bit from clear blue sky to maybe a rain shower or two, but the grey sky really made the aspens pop.

This side of the park was hit pretty hard by a fire in 2024, I think it was the Alexander Mountain fire but I can't be sure. We knew we were getting pretty close to the end of the park where the plains meets the mountains, because there was nothing to see but acres and acres of burnt trees.

It was several miles of driving through this before we reached the visitor's center, and it had started raining a bit when we got there. I had the pretty brilliant idea of asking the ranger at this visitor center if they could give me a badge because the alpine visitor center had been out. I don't know what it is about me that looks untrustworthy, but the ranger I asked gave me the most dubious look and said, "did you actually finish your booklet?" and I was like, yeah I can go grab it, they just didn't have the bages they only had stickers. He looked at me with even more distrust and said, "so you need to be sworn in?" and I got a little frustrated and I was like, "no, man, I got sworn in up there at the alpine visitor center, they just didn't have any badges available, they only had stickers." He rolled his eyes at me and was like, "Ok, I guess" and he handed me my badge. 

I was a little irritated, and I figured Derek had heard the exchange while he was getting his stamps because the stamp station was right next to the ranger station, but because the stamp station was kind of in its own little vestibule, he missed it. 

Back in the car we go, to go back up up up up so we can get back down down down down to Estes. We checked the driving directions from our location to Denver, maybe we would just drive from there to Jinya for dinner with my friend and his wife, but that was going to be a three hour drive versus a two hour drive going back the way we came. So we went back the way we came. 

We were driving behind this little like...open air jeep type vehicle taking a load of tourists through the trail ridge road tour, and I'm not going to lie, it made my thighs clench to look at it. 

Is it safe? Is it sexy? Is it OSHA compliant?

Obviously I had a different vantage on the way down, and I was legit crying over how pretty it was. Derek rubbed my leg and was like, "awww, nature makes you so emotional!" and I don't know if he meant that as just a statement of fact or something else entirely, but yes. Yes it does. How it doesn't make everybody else emotional is beyond me. 

Look at these views, how can you not want to cry?

We did not take the other gate out of the park to get our last stamp of the day. I can't even recall why, but we decided to save that for the next day after leaving the park when we finished our hike. Maybe it was to  have more than one date in the book, but it might have also been because of some other thing. The weather had gone back to gorgeous as we left, a proper send off for the day.

Dinner in Denver did not happen, sadly. Ian and his wife were so gracious about trying to fit us in at the very last of minutes, and I wish it had worked out (the same thing happened the next night. Again, no fault of theirs. I waited until literally the last minute to ask if they were available, I was just thrilled they tried to fit us in despite my thoughtlessness and weirdness for being nervous to ask sooner). This meant Derek and I had no dinner plans, and we didn't really feel like driving to Denver for Jinya if we weren't going to be eating with friends, so Derek stopped to get himself some In 'N' Out during the most gorgeous parking lot sunset.

We've been in national parks for nine fucking days, chasing light like this, and we find it in an Estes Park strip mall parking lot. Go fucking figure. 

I made myself hot slop at the hotel, and we crashed pretty early. We had to wake up at 4am for our last full day in RMNP.