After leaving the Valley of Fire, we drove through the night to Estes Park to spend a few days at one of my very favorite places on earth--Rocky Mountain National Park. Good golly I love this place so much, and it was spaced perfectly to help us break the drive home into 2 18-hour stretches (doesn't that sound fun!)
We've camped at Glacier Basin so many times that we can literally chart the post-fire tree growth in our campground photos, haha!
After driving through the night, everyone was pretty tired so we just kind of hung around and chilled after we set up camp.
Then Neil & I walked over to Sprague Lake, which is less than a mile from the campground but we've never taken time to go see it! (We asked a ranger about swimming and she said the lakes are warm enough to support leeches, no thanks.)
Luke's very relaxing reading pose
And Neil trying unsuccessfully to nap with his hammock buddy.
It never ceases to be funny to me--I love buying stuff at low elevation and then taking it up.
The next day we got up bright and early to hike up to Hallett Peak!
This is a truly delightful hike.
It overlooks lots of the other lakes in the Bear Lake/Glacier Gorge area and it's fun to get a new perspective on them from above!
Lots of gorgeous flowers en route to Flattop Mountain, which you also go over on the way to Hallett.
And soooo many marmots and pika! This was a particularly big marmot that was super interested in Nathan.
Loved the weather on this hike; it was so nice to get a little chilly again! You can see the top of Hallett in this photo rising over the glacier.
It looks so close, doesn't it? Hah!
We were planning to eat our lunch on the summit, but even though it was well before noon, clouds were already starting to blow in and we could see Longs Peak getting absolutely hammered, so we decided to head down below the treeline.
I love the mountains so, so, so much.
The wildflowers were SO good!
This was such a good hike and it's a great option for a summit if you don't want to leave the Bear Lake area!
And as always, a spectacular sunset in Glacier Basin.
The next day, we decided to do one of our family's favorite hikes: Sky Pond. The first time we did this in 2019 it felt like such a HUGE hike; our kids were so little then and it was our first-ever major alpine hike (and snow!). Always fun to think about how far we've come as hikers.
And bittersweet to get our regular photo at Alberta Falls; we've been taking pictures here since 2013 and this is the first one without Abigail.
I didn't take as many photos since this is such a familiar hike, which was nice to just relax a bit and soak it all in.
Timberline Falls as beautiful as ever! The "climb up a waterfall" aspect of this hike really is so fun.
It makes you feel like a really adventurous hiker!
It's a great season of life where nobody ever asks to be carried and instead you're hustling to keep up with the kids!
Lake of Glass just as beautiful as ever
And finally arriving at Sky Pond! (finally, haha, it was maaaaybe 2 hours? Maybe?)
See all the snow touching the water? Right after we took this photo crazy Neil went for a swim. I had my feet in the water and they were literally numb within seconds.
These columbine were so beautiful!
On our way back we saw some elk with craaaaaazy huge racks.
We watched them for a long time.
Then we decided to detour to Lake Haiyaha and for some reason I was thinking it was all downhill there and...it wasn't. There was a lot of grumbling about that.
But it's worth it when you get there, right??
Absolutely in my happy place.
Then we got back to camp and enjoyed some nice time before/after a torrential rainstorm where we ended up going for a drive to Beaver Meadows just to get warm again.
On our way out the next day we stopped by the alluvial fan area before heading up Old Fall River Road; this is by far my favorite way to get to the Trail Ridge Road visitor center.
A surprisingly high number of skiers!
And then we headed home. The end!
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