Day 5

We got up early, made some breakfast tacos and headed to the park. We drove up to do a day hike in an area called Bear Lake. There is not much in the way of bears in Colorado anymore, but it was a very nice hike nonetheless. This park is very crowded and compared to other places we have been you do not really feel isolated, as you encounter other hikers frequently. The best part about it was the snow that was still there. Grant and Alex love to play and snow and stopped at every snowbank to make snowballs and peg each other and us with them. Grant found an area where someone had made a snow slide and had a blast sliding down on his bottom over and over again. We then hit the main trail which was about a mile and a half each way and led up to some beautiful alpine lakes. The steep terrain combined with the altitude wore the children out quickly. They made it up fine, but some deep snow prevented an easy hike. On the way down, Alex tired out and I ended up carrying her most of the way. For the afternoon I planned a drive for us along Trail Ridge road. This is a long narrow alpine road that winds throught the park and offers some magnificent views of the mountains. This seemed like a good idea until we began to ascend and clouds began to roll in. It began to rain and the temperature began to drop. This wouldn’t be a big deal except that the road is very narrow, winding and has no guardrails. There is no room for error and a small slip on ice could prove spectacularly fatal. We headed back down, and after some idiot passed us on a blind curve on the mountain roads, it cemented my reasoning for coming down from up there. We headed back to camp, and cooked two of the trout we had caught the day before while the kids played. We hit the sack tired from the days activities.