The Four Blevins : Road Trip

On Tuesday I had planned some hiking in RMNP. Everybody was tired, so I left them sleeping...

to walk down to get some coffee. Starbucks was just down this riverwalk about 5 minutes.

The sun was out and it was such a gorgeous morning!

After I grabbed my coffee, I went back and got everybody up so maybe we could get some hiking in before the midday rain came. We headed into the park and I was already excited about seeing some scenery instead of fog! :)

We were going to do the hike around Bear Lake, but they weren't kidding about the parking lot filling up. If you aren't there early, you don't get a spot, and there's no where to turn around, so you just have to hope that someone else was pulling out of a spot. Well, no luck. So we check a couple other trails and their lots were full too. After a little bit of discussion, Brian and I decided to try Trail Ridge Road again since it was a clear day and we could see. There was a lot of traffic and some delays, but we got to the Alpine Visitors Center right around lunchtime so we decided to stop and eat. These boy really got kick out of the puffy chip bags. :)

The view was MUCH better than the day before.

We left the visitors center and decided to go through the rest of the park to see what we could see and visit Grand Lake on the other side. Hudson didn't last very long. :)

We stopped at at trail head to Adams Falls. It was starting to drizzle, but we needed to hike! So everybody threw on their rain jackets and off we went.

It was a short, but very pretty hike.

We met a cute little family that took our picture.

They told us there was a pretty meadow not far down the trail so we decided to head that way. The rain started to get slightly heavier and the thunder sounded closer, so we rushed our way down, I snapped a picture and then we headed back to the car.

Because being struck by lightening wasn't a vacation story I wanted to tell. #canigetanamen

We then drove into the cute little town of Grand Lake. (Mind you, we drove less than 10 minutes, got out and the sun was shining. So weird.)

We went into a cute little store and for some ice cream and a candied apple.

Grand Lake is a lot smaller than Estes Park as far as the town goes, but it does have the gorgeous lake with some beautiful homes around the shore. We really liked it.

We left Grand Lake and took our last pass over Trail Ridge Road, stopping at the lookouts to get some pictures.

We saw a ton of elk that day - a few up close, but ended up seeing about 30 or so.

And we saw a moose - the first real life moose I've ever seen! I was hoping to see a bull moose with some big ol' antlers, but this little lady was still pretty cool!