And now to the most famous National Park...in Colorado

Last Sunday, Bill had a most excellent idea for our "day off" activity - to spend the day at Rocky Mountain National Park! Imagine my surprise when I realized that the RMNP is only 1.5 hours away from my house! I immediately packed up our sandwiches and Gatorade in the day pack and we began our Rocky Mountain adventure.

Look what we found on the side of the road just outside the park! There were half a dozen male elk just hanging out in somebody's yard! I was impressed.

This was, of course, before we got into the RMNP when I realized that elk are more numerous than prairie dogs. And there are A LOT of prairie dogs. But they're still cool. :)

We drove around the park for a little while admiring the amazing views and searching for other little wild creatures. The park brochure listed some featured hikes for the time of year, so we decided to hike the Bear Lake Trail to see a waterfall.

Snow! It was in the 70's and very sunny that day, and we hiked the entire trail through the snow. Luckily for me, I am an experienced 'snow-hiker' (remember the Royal Arch hike?), so I did fine. I could hear Bill, however, slipping and sliding all over the place behind me. It was great fun.


The waterfall was beautiful - powerful and loud! It wasn't a very long waterfall, but it was wide and resembled a very steep river rapids. It was pretty impressive. Unfortunately the only picture Bill took of it was the above close-up of the water. Hmmm... maybe I should carry the camera from now on... :)


Here we are being goofy at the summit of the hike with a very small portion of the RMNP behind us. We tried to take some serious, more romantic pictures - but that's just not our style. They came out totally cheeseball, so we stuck with our more comfortable goofiness. Why pretend to be something you're not?

The picture below was my favorite spot during our visit to the park. Just gorgeous.


We had a fantastic day at the park. We even purchased an annual pass, so we can go back any time. There are so many trails to hike, and campgrounds to stay in, and creatures to find, and fish to catch, and...

Wow. What a great day.

Just for fun: this is my friend Soren on the day I we hung out in the giant sandbox at the mall. Jen (his mom) and I both had coupons to use at the VS store. Soren decided that it is very fun to play with drawers (pun intended). ;)

And here is another amazing Colorado sunset. Have we mentioned how much we love it here?

In other news - if you haven't already heard, I passed my NAVLE (my 2nd of 3 licensing exams)! Bill is still doing great with Edward Jones and has opened several accounts. I'm running the Bolder Boulder on Monday, so think fast and enduring thoughts for me! In 2 weeks we're going to NY for my graduation ceremony and Bill will meet my mom's side of the family for the first time. That should be good.