After a long travel day on Monday we finally arrived in the US, flying from Heathrow to Denver airport which took around 9 hours – looks like we just missed the chaos with air traffic control and loads of flight cancellations on Tue and Wed this week across the UK, so we were lucky!

When we landed we had a pretty long drive to get to the town we’re staying in which is called Estes Park, and is right outside the entrance to the Rocky Mountains National Park. We’re staying at a mid-tier hotel in the town called Coyote Mountain Lodge, but when we booked it oddly all their rooms were the same price, so we could choose between a standard motel-style room, or a 2 bedroom apartment for the same price – urrrr, yeah no brainer really.

It’s a nice big place, loads of space and a nice outdoor balcony / patio area too.

On our first day (Tue 8th Sept) we tried to have a quieter day to settle in, so went back towards Denver to some of the shopping malls and outlet stores, although it ended up being quite a long day anyway with all the driving. We’re still pretty jet-lagged, waking up at stupid times in the middle of the night and struggling to get back to sleep as we’re 7 hours behind the UK at the moment. Hopefully we’ll catch up soon.

Day 2 (Wed 9th Sept) we had a proper day out though, heading in to the Rocky Mountains for a day of sight seeing and hiking. We were out quite early around 7.30am ish – I woke up at 4am so it didn’t seem very early!….

We first drove the scenic road up to the Alpine Visitor Center which is at one of the highest points in the park, over 12,000 feet elevation and it was cold and windy up there! We started the day in trousers, coats, fleeces etc.

They had a short walk from the visitor centre to the summit (Alpine Ridge Trail) and there was a really nice café up there as well with amazing views out in the valley – and also amazing cinnamon buns. A good start to the morning 🙂

We stopped at a few look out points on the drive up to the top, and then drove back down stopping for some other short walks (a mile or so each) at Hidden Valley:

and then at Alluvial Fan which were back down at a slightly lower elevation. It was much warmer down there too than at the peak:

The most popular part of the park is call Bear Lake which requires a booking to enter the main corridor road leading to it (see the southern fork on the earlier map above). That whole section is closed off unless you have a timed entry ticket, which we did for 12pm. They have a park and ride about half way down that road and a shuttle which takes you to Bear Lake at the end.

That had a really nice 1 mile or so walk around the lake, and then there’s various other trailheads which lead off from the same area to different hikes. We took another route which was a moderate uphill climb to two other lakes, first you pass Dream Lake and then at the top of the route you get to Emerald Lake.

We were back at the car about 3.45pm ish, so time for a quick stop in town at a brewery tap room for a sneaky pint and then back to our apartment to try and relax a bit (and write this blog!).

We’ve got another day in the Rocky Mountains tomorrow, a steep climb it looks like so we will report back on that soon.

Si