June 26: The Govnabile finally pulled into Moraine Park campground in the Rocky Mountains an hour or so before sunset. Just enough time to get the RV freshwater tank filled with water, pick up some firewood, take the bikes off the Govnabile (the new Pilot name, thanks Pops!), unhook, and finally level the trailer before dark. As I did all of this along with setting up the awning, hanging lights from it, making a fire, and cooking some hot dogs, Christi did who-knows-what in the trailer “cleaning and getting it ready” (keep in mind she spends at least an hour “cleaning and getting it ready” before we leave any campground as well). To her credit, our home on the road is always spotless, except when she gives me unsupervised free reign for more than 10 minutes – it’s amazing how much clutter I can spread in a very short amount of time. I knew I married her for a good reason.  Another thing I’ve learned is that she’s used some crazy organizing tactics (that I don’t necessarily agree with), but in her incredibly patient and ever-growing understanding of the equally particular and often ornery person that I can be, she has somehow kept this organization out of my realm of awareness all together. How does she do this? Whenever I say I’m going to take on a task that will use one of these insanely packed tools/utensils/food, Christi quickly jumps up and says, “I got it”. Therefore, I never fully realize the hoops and hurdles she hops through to get them out. When I finally caught her getting one of these items and inquired, she said, “I knew you would hate it there, so just let me get it.” So, while I don’t always agree with her organization tactics, I can’t complain as long as she’s so willing to be the one to deal with it – let’s just hope it lasts. Perhaps this is what takes 2 hours to get ready going in and out of campgrounds? I may never know, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate how much she’s done to keep our RV clean and organized. Anyhow, while I was getting everything outside the RV set up and cooking dinner, Christi was apparently having a rough time doing who-knows-what in the trailer. When she finally came out to eat her hot dog that I had been keeping warm over the coals for 30 minutes by now, she was not in a great mood (probably because I had nagged her for the past hour about pausing doing who-knows-what to come eat with me). She proceeded to declare that the hot dog was not warm enough, stick it on the roasting stick again, only to have it immediately fall into the fire. At this point, she gave up and had wine for dinner, while I fished her dog out of the coals, blew it off, and ate my 3rd hot dog of the night. Yes, I ate my 8-week hot dog quota in 1 evening, and it was glorious. After her glass of wine (which works wonders), she managed to relax a bit and we hung by the fire for the evening as I washed down my hot dogs with my 8-week quota of s’mores.

June 27: In the morning, I woke up early and did some Dockem work while sitting next to our fire pit, enjoying the serenity of our tiny yet somewhat private campsite in what seemed to be the middle of a bog, kept company by a hummingbird who skirted in and out periodically.

When Christi finally arose and did all of her who-knows-what in the RV, we headed into town (Estes Park) around noon to find some wifi (we had zero service in the park) and some grub. We found that the Estes Park Public Library had free wifi and a quiet, cozy room to work at. I spent a few hours getting caught up on work, while Christi explored town a bit, grabbed a coffee and smoothie for me, then came back to the library to write some wedding thank-yous and plan our adventures in Rocky Mountain National Park. After getting caught up on my work stuff, we walked Estes Park which is a quant little town with 8 ice cream shops and 247 t-shirt shops.

We picked our favorite T’s out of the 4 million options and stopped at a “World Famous” burger joint called Penelopes, where Christi proceeded to order a club sandwich and I tried an Elk burger for the first time. It was a very tasty burger, but I can’t say I could really tell the difference from a regular beef burger. After lunch we headed back to the park and rode our bikes about .5 miles to the Cub lake trailhead, down a road, following a stream, meandering through an open meadow in the shadows of the mountains.

After locking our bikes, we crossed the stream and followed the gentle trail up to Cub lake and back down via the Fern Lake trail for a total of 6.6 miles.

It was a perfect warm-up to the Rockies where we got to see recovering burned forests, a mountain pond, tackle a bit of elevation, and see a few birds, including a wild turkey.

Towards the end, the mosquitos got pretty bad so we booked it home, but not until after meeting a grandmother, father, and 2 sons who were out for an evening stroll. Come to find out, their granddaughter/daughter/sister happened to have just graduated from Lehigh University. Small world. On our bike ride back, a Tesla (which looks very out of place out here, but it is eco-friendly I guess?) pulled over next to us with the window down and said that if we want to see a moose, there was one coming down right where we were. I was confused as to where he meant, but was excited for the opportunity. As I was looking up the road trying to spot him, Christi suddenly turns towards me and says, “Oh he’s right there” and as I turn around there’s a zombie looking moose walking almost directly at me. After pooping my pants a bit, I quickly scurried 20 ft ahead to get a safe distance and we watched in awe as the big (but very lanky) guy sauntered across the road and continued on his way not caring at all about us or any of the 10 cars watching him. I think he was a pretty old moose who’d seen better days, but it was still a very cool experience.

Back at camp, we settled in for another relaxing evening by the campfire, but not until after Christi spilled red wine all over my carefully selected cool new Estes Park Moose T-shirt. Luckily the RV cushions were spared.

June 28: This morning, we planned on getting up early, packing up camp and heading out for a long 10-mile hike up to Sky Pond. After I packed up the outside in about 30 minutes, Christi did who-knows-what for 3 hours and we finally headed out “early”, around 11 AM. On the plus side, we were so slow getting out of camp that we were able to check in to our next site in RMNP immediately (we had planned on parking in a lot for the day and then checking in after the hike). This worked out well, because apparently RMNP only reserves about 4 parking spots inside the park for visitors and starts turning people away very early in the morning (so you’d have to park farther away and shuttle in). We felt like VIP when they allowed us through the check-point because we were checking in to our site at Glacier Basin Campground. As nice and private as Moraine park was for us, Glacier Basin was an epic campground, despite the slight lack of privacy (which isn’t so much of a problem when you have an RV). Nestled into a mostly cleared out valley with wide open meadows, you’re surrounded by towering mountains on every side. We didn’t bother setting up camp, but parked and hiked out to the shuttle (a 10 min. walk away, across the street from the campground), which took us down to the Glacier Gorge trailhead around 1PM.  The trail up to Sky Pond was a strenuous but beautiful ascent, following a stream up the mountain with some waterfalls and 2 other pretty alpine lakes (Loch Vale and Glass Lake) along the way.

The craziest bit, however, came after Glass Lake during the last .5 mile, where the trees ended and the snow started. As we continued climbing through several feet of packed down snow wearing our shorts and tank tops, we looked up the trail to see a wide expanse of snow to traverse along a relatively steep grade, followed by a very steep section we’d have to go pretty much straight up. We started to wish we had brought our micro-spikes for this hike, as that would have made this a whole lot easier. Clearly we weren’t the only ones underprepared, as there was a bottleneck of hikers at the steep section where we could see people on all fours (or there butts) slipping and sliding up or down the section, some clearly enjoying it and others not so much. We soon learned that I was in the enjoying it camp while Christi was not, but we both made it safely to the top in one piece. We took a much needed break at Sky pond which was a very cool alpine pond surrounded on 3 sides by towering walls and peaks.

We ate lunch while watching marmots scamper across the rocks around us. I broke out the camera while Christi took a quick power nap while basking in the warm alpine sun.

On our way down, we slid/skated the first section unscathed, although I think Christi’s heart was probably racing so fast it was waiting for us at the bottom. At this point, it was us against the clock because if we didn’t catch the last shuttle at 7:30, it would be an extra 3.5 mile hike back to camp from the trailhead. By the time we were halfway down, Christi was so exhausted that if you saw her walking and didn’t know better, you might think her camelback was filled with wine. She was a trooper though and kept putting one foot in front of the other while putting up with my incessant pestering to, “Hurry up or we’ll miss the shuttle!”. Of course, we made it to the shuttle with 20 minutes to spare, so I will admit that Christi was right the 40 times she said, “we’re fine we don’t need to rush”. On the short hike back to camp from the shuttle stop, we were lucky to see an elk with a big rack of antlers grazing by the stream along the way. I got out my camera and spent a few minutes capturing the serene scene as the sun began to set.

Christi moved on to camp, but along the way found there were 2 more elk hanging in the meadow right next to the campground and got lots of photos there as well while standing only about 10 ft from the gentle giants.

Back at camp, we quickly changed and got the RV settled then decided we’d head into town for dinner and to refill one of our propane tanks. Unfortunately Estes Park is not a late night town, so by the time we got there around 9:15 we had very few dinner options. We settled on one of the few restaurants still open, Wild Rose Inn, which we’ll just say wasn’t one of our favorites of the trip so far. Of course, by the time we finished dinner the gas stations were closed so we couldn’t swap the propane tank, but somehow the ice cream shops were still open. Hayley’s ice cream shop wound up saving the evening with their awesome homemade ice cream. 

June 29: We decided today was finally the day we would rise early to be among the first on the trail. We had big plans to drive into town quickly to finally fill the propane tank and to stop at the visitor center to get some advice on what hike to tackle. This was a terrible decision. Note to self – once in a National Park on a weekend in the summer, don’t ever leave unless you don’t plan to re-enter. We were able to fill our propane tank and stop at the Visitor’s center, but the line of cars to get back into the park was backed up for miles. Luckily, it moved relatively quickly and we were able to save 20 minutes by sliding through the VIP lane with our Annual National Park pass (another awesome thing to have if ever planning to see more than 1 national park in a year). After taking the shuttle up to Bear Lake trailhead, we finally hit the trail at 1 PM for our 9 mile hike up to Emerald Lake, back down to Bear Lake, through Bierstadt lake, and finally directly back to camp. Getting to Emerald lake was another pleasant yet strenuous ascent with a stop at Dream Lake along the way where I set up to take some photos and Christi was terrorized by a menacing chipmunk that snuck up on her out of nowhere and nearly bit her head off (or so it would seem by her reaction).

Once at Emerald Lake, we found a rock to hang on and spent an hour or so eating lunch, drinking White Claws that Christi valiantly hauled all the way up there, taking photos, and watching the crazy kids on the neighboring rock jump into the ice cold lake.

Back at the bottom, we took the short hike around Bear lake and read the nature trail guide along the way, learning more about the alpine plants, animals, and geology. As we turned one corner on the trail, we were lucky again to be nearly face to face with another elk as it peacefully grazed just a few feet off the trail. We continued on our way after a few obligatory selfies.

Not so peaceful was Christi’s mood as she came to the realization that we had another 2 mile hike back to camp. Nonetheless, she trooped/steamed her way to Bierstadt lake and finally back to camp. Again, by the time we exited the woods, passersby may have thought she was stumbling out of a bar at 2AM. Despite Christi’s discomfort, the hike from Bear Lake to Bierstadt and finally to Glacier Basin was actually a very serene hike through a stately pine forest where we were mostly the only ones on the trail (there were tons of people on the trail to Emerald Lake). The only other life we saw was one other couple and a large rabbit who scampered across the trail. 

Back at camp, I cooked up dinner and we relaxed by the fire with some cheese and wine. As the sun set behind the distant peaks and we enjoyed the fiery glow of the sky, a trio of elk sauntered right through our campsite, only 20 ft away and parked again for a while in the meadow nearby. RMNP, thanks for a wonderful stay and for sharing your wildlife with us!