mooses? meese? well, there were 3. the biggest guy is standing behind the one on the left. if you look close you can see his giant antlers.
we are back from our vacation to colorado and i'll be back to sewing, drawing, and blogging as soon as i tackle the dirty kitchen and the huge piles of laundry. until then, here's a little vacation story.
we drove to winter park, co the day before our hike started. it was a cute little vacation (second home) town with great landscaping and a nice park. we hiked in rocky mountain national park out of grand lake, the less popular west side of the park. within the first few hours of our hike we came across those 3 bull moose, very cool. the first day was almost 8 miles of hiking to get to our campsite. we stopped at a waterfall for lunch and there was a pretty little lake we passed in the afternoon.
on day 2 we left our campsite set up because we were also staying there on night 2. we took a "short" 6 mile hike to visit 2 mountain lakes. we also passed another waterfall. the trail was fairly steep and we were around 10-11 thousand feet above see level the entire day. we did not see any other people on day 2. and we were lucky to miss the afternoon rain both on day 1 and day 2.
on day 3, our summit day, we started out early knowing we would be above the treeline for several hours. we got out of bed and packed up camp at 4am. we were on the trail by 5am. we were meeting all of our goals in the morning as far as speed and distance were concerned. we came across 4 elk grazing near a mountain stream and stopped to take pictures. they were so close and very peaceful. we continued on to the summit, hallett peak at 12,735 ft, and ditched our packs for the last 1/2 mile of the trail. we didn't spend much time up on the summit because it was already 11am and we knew we should be back below the treeline around 1pm in case of any afternoon storms. when we reached the treeling we were happy to have seen the approaching clouds and already put on our rain gear. it began to snow. the snow lasted 10 minutes when it turned to hail. it hailed on us for about 2 hours and then changed to rain for the last 30 minutes of the storm. by the time we reached our campsite, 12 miles that day, the sun was shining. we were in a meadow and on the side of the mountain there was a herd of elk. the elk serrenaded us with bugeling until about 2am.
on day 4 we woke to frost on the ground but the sun came out quickly and warmed things up. we knew we were hiking on an easy trail that day but it was still nearly 8 miles. by the time we got back to the car i could not walk another step. we went to grand lake for a late pizza lunch. it tasted so good, mmmm. we were camping at a local private campgrounds that night. all i required was a good shower. the worst part of our vacation was the night at the campground. a local raft-guide company was having thier end-of-season employee party and our campsite was located in between the sites they occupied. needless to say, the dog ended up not getting attacked by the moose, the drunks were in bed by 12:30, and we did not pay for our miserable night at the "short cut" campsite.
we got up after not much sleep and warmed our leftover pizza for breakfast. after resisting the temptation to bang our pots and pans together to wake our neighbors we headed up trail ridge road to the alpine visitor center. it was nice to be driving and not hiking for a change. we drove through the park and on to boulder where we spent the last day-and-a-half of our vacation.
we visited the denver botanic gardens, had a picnic, and went on a very short 1 mile hike at the flat irons. while on our hike we encountered 3 bears. they were just right. :) really, the location they selected was perfect for our picture taking. the 3rd bear was on the ground and ran away when we stopped to take the pictures. but these 2 were hanging out in the tree.
we spent the evening at the pearl street mall and drove home the next day. it was a great time, a very fun vacation.
Looks like a very nice trip!
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