On Memorial Day we drove through some beautiful scenery to get to Rocky Mountain NP. Rocky Mountain NP is actually located in a town called Estes Park. We had meet a guy from Colorado when we were in Canyonlands NP that told us Estes Park was pretty cool and it turned out nothing like we expected.
On the way to Estes Park we got to drive through a little bit of Boulder, CO (where the University of Colorado is) from what we saw it looked pretty neat. We then drove through some little mountains and then the road dropped us right into Estes Park. It was awesome, small town feel with cabin and lake homes. We were really lucky that it was Memorial Day because they had an art expo going on at their downtown park. So we headed more up into the mountains to get into Rocky Mountain NP to get to our campsite and get settled so we could go back into downtown Estes Park and check things out.
It was really nice inside Rocky Mountain NP, it reminded me of pictures I had seen of Yosemite in the winter. Lots of trees, different kinds of trees, all over the mountains. We got to our campsite and set up shop, then unhooked and headed back down to downtown Estes Park. We headed over to the art show, they had lots of local artists and then artists from all over the state and surrounding states. There was jewelry, pottery, wood carvings, photos, and paintings. Lots of really neat stuff and lots of really expensive stuff. Then we walked around the town, lots of tourist t-shirt shops, Indian trading posts, ice cream and candy shops, and restaurants. The town vibe was good, lots of things to do, etc.
We headed back to our campsite to make some BBQ hamburgers and sweet potato fries. (did you know what you think are sweet potatoes (the orange ones) are really yams...)
After we had BBQed it started to rain pretty bad and got pretty chilly. The next morning we got up to go for a hike and then we were going to head over to Loveland, where we were going to be staying for a few nights. We are going to use Loveland as a hub to check out Denver and all it's cities surrounding it.
We decided to take the Bear Cub Lake trail that heads back into the mountains to Bear Cub Lake. I do not know what my problem was that day but I was not thinking too well. For some reason or another I did not bring the trail map...
Well the trail was really nice, we got to see some beautiful sights (check the photos), we got to see a bunch of elk (apparently it was mating season) and lots of streams and mini-lakes. Well we were told that the trail was about 5 miles round trip and we got almost half way but without the map we were a little sketchy on how far to go before we should turn back because it looped into another trail that was like 11 miles long and we did not want to get stuck out there for the entire day. Let's just say that Joe and I were not in the best of moods this day and having no map did not help! When we got back to the start of the trail we looked at the map and realized that we missed the actual Bear Cub Lake by about .2 miles, but we still ended up doing a 4.5 mile hike!
After the hike we drove out of Rocky Mountain NP and back through Estes Park and took a scenic highway over to Loveland. We were pretty excited to get to Loveland because we were going to stay at an RV park for a couple days, so showers, hook-ups, and free wifi!!!
As it turns out while we were driving to Rocky Mountain NP I was checking Craigslist for Laker/Nugget tickets (they were playing game 4 in Denver, but prices were outrageous) and I found out that No Doubt was playing in Denver on Weds night. So I started searching for No Doubt tickets, found some, wrote some emails, and waited to hear from people.
When we left Rocky Mountain NP to go to Loveland I got a call from someone selling tickets, turns out he worked in Boulder, where we were heading the next day so we could pick them up. We got 17th row seats for not 17th row prices!!!! Talking with the gentlemen for a while about Boulder and the surrounding areas, turns out him and his wife moved to this area 11 years ago from Dallas. So we got to ask tons of questions and get real insight on the towns and what they have to offer. We were lucky, we were going to the concert and we got to talk with locals about the area!
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