What beautiful scenery on our drive and as we arrived in Estes Park just outside Rocky Mountain National Park.
We were staying at Manor RV Park for two nights. While checking in, we were told that a black bear has visited the campground the last three days. Cool, but even if he comes again tomorrow we will likely miss him because we have another early “get-up and go” morning.
On the last curve to the official park entrance I spotted this female elk grazing along the opposite side of the road.
We had a timed entry for the park 6-8am, but we were 20 minutes early. We could still get into the park and drive around, but we couldn’t turn down Bear Lake road till 6 am due to its popularity.
We weren’t interested in “driving around”, so we got fairly close to Bear Lake road and simply waited in a small pullout area. They actually had a check point about 0.2 mile down Bear Lake Rd. We watched as several cars had to turn around and come back out! Glad we pulled over to wait where and when we did. We entered at 6 am but were told we had to go to the Park-n-Ride since we were over 20 feet in length. Evidently the parking lot right at Bear Lake was small and very tight. The free shuttle runs about every 10-15 minutes to and from the park-n-ride lot. We parked, made our coffee, ate a little breakfast, got some hiking items ready, and packed waters and a little lunch. We got on the 8:30 shuttle and 10 minutes later we were starting our hike!
We walked the 0.6 miles trail all around Bear Lake at 9,435 ft elevation – a nice easy hike with some beautiful photo spots. The U-shaped valley between Hallett Mountain and Flattop Mountain was formed by the action of ancient glaciers. Tyndall Glacier is one of five active glaciers today in Rocky Mountain National Park.
We continued on to Nymph Lake – uphill with an elevation increase of about 300ft from Bear Lake.
Then to Dream Lake at 9,905 ft elevation – uphill from Nymph Lake on a more rugged trail, but not difficult.
Finally, the toughest part is the hike continuing to Emerald Lake at 10,110 feet in elevation!
We had a little lunch and began our hike back down.
As always with the elevation, it was so much easier going down.
While it was only about 4.3 miles, but with the altitude we were exhausted when we got back to Sadie about 1 PM. We both took a nap here before leaving. We are spoiled having Sadie with us all the time. Being able to get in a quick nap after early get-ups followed with hiking is a nice routine. 🙂
Back in the campground we met Karen and Allen. Karen was from England, and Allen was from Scotland. They had been renting a Cruise America class C RV, but were flying home tomorrow. I had great conversations with them. We clicked on multiple levels. They gave us their two bear sprays. We really appreciated because our current spray expires in a few months. They also ended up giving us additional things they couldn’t take with them like beer, extra TP and firewood! Three things that we would most definitely use! We were glad their visit to a number of our National Parks was such a positive one for them, and we wished them safe, smooth travels back to England.
Tomorrow when we leave Manor RV Park, we will drive through RMNP from the east entrance to the west side.