Day 17: Rocky Mountain NP

We woke up in our high altitude camp and went for breakfast. We learned a valuable lesson. If in the menu there are different sizes of the portion, always ALWAYS take the smallest one. Luckily also it is possible to get a doggy-bag for brekfast. We said goodbye to our hippie lodge, and headed for Nederland. The town was not giving us vibes of success and prosperity, so we decided to quickly continue our journey towards Rocky Mountain national park.

We chose as our first hiking trip a few mile route near Bear Lake. We were caught by a surprise by the amount of snow there was still on the path. Since we are accustomed to arctic weather circumstances (or at least 50% of us are), we bravely continued. We met along the way a lady from Switzerland, who was living now in the US and had a yearly pass to the NP. (She asked us to also give her regards to Europe, so here they are: Hello Europe!)

On the distance were rain clouds and you could hear thunder roaring. The woman also warned us that in case you see a lightning, start immediately to go down. After some time we saw her coming down from where we were heading. She said she decided to give up the route as it started to rain and the amount of snow increased. We decided to still continue for a bit so that we could reach the 3km altitude. And we did! We could also clearly feel the difference in the level of fatigue when going higher. However after this we headed quite quickly down, we were not intrested to remain and see what would be the highest point in the surroundings, especially when the treeline started to be below us.

We also did a route around Bear Lake which was really small one and even meant for people with wheelchairs. Halfway through we noticed though, that maybe the wheelchair part only applies during the summer months. We lost the route and needed to climb through mountains of snow here and there to get back. It was good we did this "easy" one after, as otherwise we would have probably not done the moderate first hike at all.

This is where we lost the trail

After few hours of hiking we were quite done. We went to see a third route, which was fortunately half-closed so we got a good excuse not to continue :) Unfortunately the driving route through the NP was still closed for winter, so we could not see the highest point in the road which would've been over 3,7km. Instead we drove back few hours and took course towards Glenwood Springs, which is close to the border of Colorado and Utah.

The drive there included the most beautiful part of interstate yet. I-70 goes through Glenwood Canyon for 12 miles. In other states they would make this a National park, in Colorado they apparently have so much things already that they decided to build a highway instead :) in Glenwood Springs we chose the Holiday Inn (nice to get comfortable beds every now and then) and walked around the city. There is also a big outdoor spring water pool. Unfortunately it was closed just today and tomorrow, so we could not go and try it. The city itself seemed to be a base for all skiers in th area, and it seemed very much to be quieting down for the season. After walking around finding most places closed, we ended up having dinner in a nearby Mexican restaurant.

P.S. Since the national park week continues, we again got free entrance and saved 20$. More gambling money for Vegas! ;)