Rocky Mountain

On Wednesday we pulled into Rocky Mountain National Park around 10:30 at night. It was already dark and I had previously reserved a campsite that you had to hike into. Thankfully it was a very short hike. In the dark it seemed to be an amazing campsite and I couldn't wait to see what it looked like in the morning when the sun came up. 

It was beautiful! Definitely one of the best campsites I've had before (in a public campground). The view was beautiful and the site was somewhat secluded from other sites.

We even saw some wildlife when we were packing up. There were several mule deer just hanging out in the campground. 

Once we got packed up, we went off to explore the park. 

We arrived at the Alpine Visitor Center about 20 minutes before the opened. This was fine because there was a challenging altitude hike up a large set of stairs to a viewpoint at 12,005ft elevation. I did this last year on my quick visit and wanted to show Donny the amazing views from the top. So we headed up the stairs making sure to take our time because of the elevation. 

The view from the top was amazing, as expected. Most of the pictures must be on Donny's phone because I don't have any on mine. Sorry! 

When we got back down, the visitor center was open. I couldn't wait to go in and get my National Parks Passport stamped. I stamped my passport and picked up a couple things to buy when all of a sudden I got super nauseated and almost passed out. Donny was standing behind me and the lady across the counter could see how pale I got real quick. She ran out and hurried me over to a seat. Donny was caught off guard because he really didn't know what happened. I just threw my money at him and told him to pay. Lol. After he paid he came over and I had him go get me some water. At that moment I started getting super hot and had to start peeling layers. I had on my down jacket, a long sleeve shirt and a TShirt. Yes, it was cold out. They still have snow mounds in the parking lots. A few minutes later an EMT came over and was talking with me to make sure I was ok. Turns out, he's from PA too! We talked and basically boiled it down to the fact that I only had 4 hours of sleep the night before and wasn't drinking enough water. He advised me to "get down" to lower elevation as soon as possible, even though I already had a couple hikes planned to do. 

We listened to him and went ahead and headed down to lower elevation. We did stop at Milner Pass, which is where the Continental Divide crosses the road. I had planned on hiking a mile into the trail and standing on the Divide there, but I still wasn't feeling well enough for that. So, we settled for a picture at the sign. 

Then we went down a little further to Green Mountain trailhead where I had planned a 3 mile hike on the Continental Divide Trail back to a big meadow that is supposed to be a great spot for seeing Elk and Moose. We hiked a few yards and decided just to go get lunch somewhere. 

We left Rocky Mountain Park knowing that we want to go back again. There is so much to do there! 

We stopped in the town of Granby, CO for lunch. Granby is the town of Killdozer. A man tried to bulldoze many buildings in the town in 2009. It was National News. You can find news videos on YouTube. It was a pretty interesting story. 

From there we drove through Colorado and into Utah. 

Next Stop: Arches National Park!