Weekend in Estes!

 This weekend, I travelled up to Estes Park with my roommate, Katie, and two of our other friends, April and Tiffany. I had been up there one other time for a hike, but it was a short one and we turned and came back. This time we planned to spend the entire weekend!

Friday after work, Katie and I drove up to Estes and met up with Tiffany and April, who had left earlier that day and already gotten a hike in. We were staying at the KOA cabins and weren't sure what to expect. The cabins were the perfect size with just beds and a couple of outlets. We also had our own firepit, but opted to go to the community firepit to roast our hotdogs and smores. When the KOA employee got the fire started in under 60 seconds, we knew that was a wise decision. Plus, they had real roasters to use rather than the wire hangers I had thrown in the car originally. Bonus!

Saturday morning, we woke up early to get a good start on our hikes. We planned to hike the flattop mountain trail, and things started off pretty good. We soon realized we were in for more of an adventure than we had planned. The mountains had gotten a lot of good snow this past winter, so much so that a lot of it was still there.

The second half of the trail was majority covered in snow. There were a few points where we had to say a quick prayer and hold on to a strong tree branch to keep from falling down the mountain. Just kidding, dad. Nothing was quite that bad. But there were some scary moments. After a couple miles of hiking, and getting to a peak where we actually saw skiers, we decided to head back down and try a different trail.

We then started the trail by the Glacier Gorge. I'll preface by saying I haven't gone on that many hikes in my life, but this was absolutely stunning. These pictures can't even show how beautiful it really was. About halfway up the trail, we stopped at Alberta Falls. The wind blowing the water onto us a bit felt great and I could have sat there all day staring at it.

As we got near the top, our legs really started to wear on us. At this point we had hiked about 8 miles for the day. However, the last .8 miles had a high elevation so it was quite the struggle to reach the top, but when we reached the Loch, it was worth every bit of it.

That night we had dinner in Estes Park and went to the bars there. We also found a very disturbing shop that we seriously considered burning down:

The weekend was an amazing one and I'm glad we all got to go. It's pretty awesome to think that we can make a quick one-hour trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park when most people plan that as their summer vacation. If you've never been - I strongly encourage you put it on your to-do list!!