October 9

We left Loveland early, headed for the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). It was a good thing we arrived early because the campground ended up full shortly after we got our site, and the line up to get into the park was close to a mile long. We got a great site overlooking the meadows with nothing blocking our view.

We headed out to Bear Lake for hiking and had to park in the overflow parking and take a shuttle to the hiking area. We got off at the trailhead for Alberta Falls because the bus was crammed far beyond what was safe. Karen immediately felt the chill from being up so high. We did the out and back trips to Alberta Falls (uphill climb), then hiked to Bear Lake (another uphill climb), circled Bear Lake, then hiked past Nymph Lake to Dream Lake (the worst of the uphill climbs). But all of the hikes were well worth the effort and as J2 says "aren't you glad you did it?".

As we returned to the campsite we saw a number of elk along the side of the road, and a number of tourists who were doing their best to become the next recipient of an elk antler in the buttocks.

October 10

We woke up this morning to a gang of elk in our campsite about 20 feet from our trailer. As we watched them, we could see and hear the bull braying and looking for some female attention.

We headed in to Estes Park for a shopping excursion. It was a neat little town with a river that ran through the center of town and we saw a couple of shops that used the rocks as one of the walls. We got the only parking space on the street - not the only available one, there literally was only one parking spot on the entire street. We went early and were astounded at the number of people and cars that came after us.

After lunch, we hiked to Cub Lake. This was a 9 km hike which involved one very long uphill climb over boulders. The lake was quite pretty, and was surrounded by countless burnt out trees from a 2013 forest fire. We enjoyed a peaceful rest here. This is not a very popular hike due to its strenuous nature. On the return we saw a number of elk in the distance. There were three male elk who took turns facing off with each other.

We decided that this could be another "Dark Sky" location as the number of stars and Milky Way was amazing.