Maria's Road Trip to the Rockies, Part 5: More Rocky Mountain National Park

Go here to find the first four parts of my travelogue. If you're too tired or busy to read all those old articles, it's okay. Let me summarize the first four days of my trip: Ike's house, dinosaur bones, haunted hotel, hiking.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Today is our last full day in Estes Park, Colorado. We're not in any great hurry to leave the condo this morning. My calves are a little sore from all the hiking and walking we did yesterday, probably because I forgot to stretch...Yeah, that's why I'm sore. It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm out of shape.

We eat breakfast-blueberry granola, milk, and orange juice-and relax like happy, childless nerds in the sunny living room. We're still reading those novels we brought along. Dan is three-quarters of the way through Angels and Demons; I have about 100 pages left of Luthiel's Song.

All of this uninterrupted reading time is a rare treat. Normally, when I start reading a book at home, my daughter brings one of her books to me and begs me to read. So my book ends up collecting dust while I read five or fifty "Dora the Explorer" stories...Ugh. Don't get me wrong-I love reading to my kids, but those "Dora the Explorer" storybooks are even more boring than the "Dora" TV shows!

Dan's stomach hasn't been right since he ate that spicy pad thai last night, so we're determined to eat a nice, bland lunch. "Subway?" Dan suggests. Sounds good to me. We put our books down and drive over to the Subway in Estes Park's Lower Stanley Village.

Subway is right next to the Stanley Museum. I want to go into the museum because F.O. Stanley was a remarkable man (I learned a lot about him on our tour of The Stanley Hotel), and it's free. Dan makes a face. "I don't need to go in," he says. Oh, all right, Mr. "Museums Suck." Let's forget it and go eat. (I'll drag Dan into that Stanley Museum the next time we're in Estes Park. Just you wait and see!)

The lady who fixes my sandwich in Subway suggests a special garlic sauce-it tastes like garlicky Italian dressing-for my Veggie Delight sub with provolone cheese on wheat bread. Very good. And she gives me two chocolate chip cookies with my meal. Yum!

The plan is to go back to Rocky Mountain National Park after lunch, follow Trail Ridge Road until we're ready to turn around, and then do some more hiking. That's exactly what we do. We take Highway 34 into the park, show our pass at the Fall River Entrance Station (this entrance is a little bit north of the Beaver Meadows park entrance we took yesterday), and almost immediately pull over to take pictures of the group of elk right next to the road.

Then we drive. At first it's a lot of meandering through pretty forests, but soon we start going up, up, up, UP. Trail Ridge Road is, according to this site, the "highest continuous motorway in the United States, with more than eight miles lying above 11,000 feet and a maximum elevation of 12,183 feet."

I've never been to Rocky Mountain National Park this early in the summer before, and I'm amazed by all the snow next to the road. I should have expected it, after our hikes yesterday, but WOW, look at all that SNOW! (See figure 1.) The higher we get, the colder and windier it gets. We pull off the road to take pictures at most of the scenic overlooks. (See figure 2.) Thanks to all the iced tea I drank for lunch, I'm forced to use a Johnny on the Spot at the Rainbow Curve overlook. It's all right. I'm tough. I survive.

Once we get above the treeline, Dan stops enjoying the drive. He's not afraid of heights, but the desolate landscape puts a damper on his mood. I'm not affected quite as severely; I do miss the trees, but I also think it's cool to be able to look down on the surrounding area from that elevation.

We get out at Rock Cut, which is approximately 12,100 feet in elevation, to take more pictures and walk along the Tundra Communities Trail (and freeze our butts off. See figure 3). Check out that alpine tundra...and snow! Snowy mountains all around us! Dang, that wind is strong. BRRRRRRRRRR!

Okay, I'm ready to go back down the mountain now, back to where it's warm and pleasant. Dan's been ready for the last 5 miles. So we don't make it to the Alpine Visitor Center this trip. (If it's your first time in Rocky Mountain National Park, you really should take Trail Ridge Road all the way to the Alpine Visitor Center, and then go on to cross the Continental Divide. Dan and I have already done all that on previous trips.)

We coast down the mountain. The snow next to the road is at least 9 feet deep in parts. I can't imagine being a snowplow driver up here. The snowplows have done great work, obviously-Trail Ridge Road is clear and dry-but I wonder if anyone's ever plowed too close to the edge and fallen off. There are guardrails on some of the turns, but not on all of them. And it's a long way down. I don't see any mangled snowplows in the valley below, but you never know...

Eventually we turn onto Bear Lake Road(remember Bear Lake Road from yesterday?), and drive to the Sprague Lake Trailhead. The Sprague Lake Trail is supposed to be "easy," and it is. This isn't "hiking" at all! This is absolutely delightful! There are kids running around Sprague Lake in their flip-flops, for crying out loud! And people fishing in the serene lake. This is the only trail we've tried that's truly wheelchair-accessible (we pass a man in a wheelchair as we're walking on the trail, in fact).

The Bear Lake Trail we hiked on yesterday might be wheelchair-accessible after the snow melts. But if you're looking for a trail that's truly a "walk in the park" for people of all ages and fitness levels, this Sprague Lake Trail is perfect. The trail is flat and shaded (and there's no snow down here!), and takes us on an easy loop around the lake. We see a mama duck with seven ducklings and a chipmunk who wants to be our best friend. In short, Sprague Lake is lovely, even without the spectacular mountain backdrop. (See figure 4.)

Now we're warmed up for a more serious hike. At least, we think we are. We drive back up to the Bear Lake Trailhead to hike to Dream Lake. This hike is rated "moderate" by the nice church people I mentioned in Part 4. I think I complained that the Alberta Falls hike was "uphill the whole way." Not so! There were plenty of flat parts and a few downhill parts on the way to Alberta Falls. The Dream Lake hike is another story.

The Dream Lake trail really is uphill the entire way! Dan and I argue (in very out-of-breath voices) over how steep the grade is. I say 35 degrees; he says 25 degrees...The point is, it's steep and muddy and rocky, and snowy in parts. After all that, we're expecting Dream Lake to be more than a dream-this lake should be like an awesome fantasy after that so-called "moderate" hike!

I'm sorry to say Dream Lake is not an awesome fantasy lake with fairies and rainbows and chocolate doughnuts raining from the heavens. Nope. It's just an average mountain lake, smaller than Bear Lake. The water looks greenish-brown. (See figure 5.) There's a lot of snow on the trail up here-so much snow, we don't make it even halfway around the lake before we turn around to go back. Guess I should've brought my skis. (Ha! We don't own skis! And I'm not suicidal, so you won't catch me skiing in The Rockies anytime soon!)

It's been fun, but Dream Lake is our last hike in The Rockies. We're worn out, so we drive back to our condo at Mary's Lake Lodge, put our feet up, and read. We read so much that we both finish our books (within 5 minutes of each other-how wild is that?). I can't wait to read Robert Fanney's next book in the Luthiel series. (Robert writes on AC, too. He's a nice guy. Go here to visit his AC Source page.)

We eat our leftover Thai food from Thai Kitchen & Bar for supper. My cashew tofu is still delicious; Dan's pad thai is still spicy and a little disappointing. Thank goodness for Pepto Bismal.

I know what we need now: dessert at The Tavern restaurant! Yeah! It's our last night in Estes Park, so let's indulge...Carrot cake for me, and tiramisu for Dan. As we eat, we're treated to live music in The Tavern-a hippie woman with a guitar. Hey, she's pretty good! But no one will shut up to listen or clap, which makes me feel bad for her. My carrot cake isn't half as good as my mom's homemade carrot cake (I have a birthday coming up, Mom. Hint, hint). Dan isn't complaining about his tiramisu; he eats it all before I can steal a bite, so I steal a sip of his Fat Tire beer instead.

Back at the condo, we make some popcorn and try to find something good on TV. We catch the big battle scene of Return of the King (where Legolas jumps onto the giant elephant and does all those ridiculous acrobatics before finally killing the beast, and Aragorn arrives with his ghost army). Then Dan channel-surfs until we come to a show called "Man v. Food."

I'll probably never watch "Man v. Food" again, but it was entertaining. We watched the host, Adam Richman, eat a plateful of habanero pepper fritters with habanero pepper dipping sauce. Impressive! But then he failed to finish his ginormous omelet at a different restaurant. Boo! My favorite part was when he visited a doughnut shop called "Voodoo Doughnut," where the signature doughnut is shaped like a voodoo doll-poke a stake into its heart, and red jelly "blood" oozes out. Cool!

Now I can go to sleep, with visions of voodoo doughnuts dancing in my head. I can't believe we're leaving tomorrow. But on our way out, we're going to stop at the Argo Gold Mill in Idaho Springs, Colorado. Sounds fun, right? See ya in Part 6 (click here to read Part 6 now)!

For More Information:

I loaded this article with hyperlinks. Here are a couple of good sites about Rocky Mountain National Park:

http://rockymountainnationalpark.com/

http://www.nps.gov/romo

To learn more about Mary's Lake Lodge in Estes Park, Colorado, go here: http://www.maryslakelodge.com/