Vacation 2012!

We just got home from what is becoming our annual pilgrimage to RMNP. I never thought we would continue to keep returning to the same national park over and over and over, but we do, for a couple of reasons. (1) We adore RMNP. It is intensely beautiful and it feeds our souls. (2) It is about a 10-11 hour drive from Lawrence, which is a really doable day's drive. That's really all it takes for us. When we were first living in Lawrence, there was a weekend in early September that we decided to drive out to the park on a Friday. When I say that, I mean that we decided on a Friday morning to drive to the park that Friday night. (No-one can accuse of me of not being spontaneous!) Those days of picking up and driving may be over, but the feeling I get when we drive into the park is not. I tend to abuse the word 'awesome' an awful lot, but the park really is awesome.

We also used to camp or backpack, and now we tend to stay in vacation rentals -- which really is not all bad at all. I'm sure we will return to camping on some of these long trips sometime, but I am not sure I am ready to give up having a cushy bed, shower, and stovetop just yet. ;-) In any case, with a 3 y.o., I really don't want to think about week-long camping trips. We stayed in a traditional log cabin right on Shadow Mountain Lake this time (which is very close to Grand Lake, CO, at the west entrance to the park. Use of a canoe came with the cabin, so we enjoyed paddling around the different lake islands, watching ospreys and pelicans gobble trout for breakfast, and trying to catch some ourselves.


This is the view from the back porch of the cabin:


While Ceci's patience with long hikes is directly dependent on how many snack breaks we take and how many streams she gets to tromp in, we decided to take on a longer hike one day. We hiked from Milner's Pass to the summit of Mt. Ida, which is a good day hike to begin with (about 10 miles round trip from an elev. of 10,880 to 12,880), but is really a tough hike for a crew of Kansan lowlanders carrying a 35-lb 3.y.o. the whole way. When I say "we", I mean that Aaron carried her the entire way up and most of the way down. I took a turn for about 1.5 miles on the way down, which was about enough for me. There is actual photographic evidence of this below.

We stopped at one of the snowfields on the way back down and got Ceci a snowball. She thought that was pretty cool -- a snowball in July! And speaking of the snowfields... we heard a pretty crazy story from a group of Iowans that we were hiking behind. We caught up with them at the top, and apparently, one of the guys ventured out onto one of the many (very, very steep) rock scree fields, and lost his footing a little bit. Well, he started running fast down the scree field to maintain his balance, when the scree field ended and turned into a short ice shelf that truncated into an ice cliff. The way they told this story, one of the other guys had to race over and tackle him to the ground to keep him from jettisoning over the shelf edge. The fellow who had almost gone over was looking pretty green around the gills at the summit, and frankly, I can't blame him a bit. That is some scary stuff.

On a less life-and-death note, it was a truly beautiful hike. It was not a well-populated hike, and since we started out around 7 a.m., we didn't see anyone for a couple of hours at all. We did see a small army of marmots, a bunch of high-pitched little pikas, a couple of ptarmigans, and a whole series of big-horned sheep. Once we were above tree-line, there was nothing but 360 degree views of mountains and mountains and mountains.




Marmot playing peek-a-boo with us:


Big-horn Sheep:


View of an alpine lake from the summit:


Finally at the top:



Snowball in July:


Photographic evidence:


Other things that we did: Ceci earned her junior ranger badge, we played and fished in a number of different streams, did a few more (easier) hikes, and caught a slew of trout. The photo below of one of the little brook trout that I caught is one of my favorites, because Ceci's little hand underneath the fish net makes the brookie look huge. He he! I should probably crop my hand out of the photograph to make it look more impressive.







The end. :-)

Location:Rocky Mountain National Park