Estes Park Weekend–Monday Hike

Monday morning after sleeping in and one more trip to the heated outdoor pool with Dad, we packed up the van and hit one more little hike on our way out of town.   With so many places to explore, we picked one that was a little lower in elevation without snow.  Just fun to be out hiking around – even with rain clouds threatening to burst overhead.

I told the kids to hide behind the trees and then Matt kept on finding things to hide behind… thinking he was pretty funny.

We came across this cute little building on our way out of town.  Reminded us just a bit of Europe – which we love.

Estes Park Weekend–Rocky Mountain National Park

Lunch was chicken noodle soup back at the cabin.  I’m for easy food (and cheap) while we’re on vacation.  Then we played games, read and relaxed while the kids played at the Resort playground.  Then we went out exploring again… the Rocky Mountain National Park.  We followed one road up as high as you could go and then parked where the snow blocked the way.  Beautiful views and a nice big rock to climb on…

Estes Park Weekend–Afternoon Exploring

After our Bear Lake hike we drove around for awhile and when I spotted this fantastic dead tree we pulled over to explore…. and ended up staying to play for awhile.

Estes Park Weekend–Bear Lake

Saturday after breakfast we started out to explore the area.  With a Rocky Mountain National Park pamphlet we decided we’d head up to hike around Bear Lake.  What we weren’t fully prepared for was all the snow that came with all that elevation.  Turns out Bear Lake was completely frozen over.  “We’re doing this” became the phrase of the weekend as we tried to get excited about our Spring-turned-Dead-of-Winter hike.  We felt a little unprepared passing all of the snowshoe hikers, but we carried on and after getting through the windy section really enjoyed our walk around the lake and at the end, determined we wanted to come back again in August.  Below… Matthew and Dad standing by the Beak Lake Sign half buried with snow.

 

Estes Park Weekend

We had timeshare points to use since we had accumulated a bunch while in Germany. We booked a weekend trip as soon as we were back in the states so we wouldn’t lose the points.  We had planned a Steamboat Springs trip in September – but with crazy Colorado weather and some Denver area flooding we cancelled – which was actually a relief to us since we were ‘travelled out’ and anxious to be in our new house for awhile – only having moved in three weeks before.   Instead we exchanged the trip for an Estes Park Retreat at Eastertime.  We alerted five soccer teams that we would be MIA for the weekend and off we went, without almost any plan.  We left Friday after work and arrived about 8:00.  The kids ran around our 3 bedroom cabin and excitedly brought their bags in and chose their rooms.  It wasn’t the newest of accommodations – but it was big enough and a fun place to spend the weekend.

Megan

Just a couple pictures of cute kid #4.  Love this girl.

Super Crazy Dress Up

These kids crack me up.