Rocky Mountain National Park
[this website is being useless and won't let me upload photos so for now there's no photo albums but when they get back to me I'll update!!]
We arrived at Rocky Mountain national park with plenty of time to spare are have a look around but first we needed to find a place to park Suzanne. We had been told by the camper van rental people that you can park for free anywhere in a national park so long as you are at least 200 metres off the main road. This is in fact completely wrong. You can't park overnight in any national park that we have found so far, we did park in Big Bend but we later found out that that was actually prohibited and we were just lucky not to be caught! In RMNP there are signs at every car park or side road saying overnight parking is strictly prohibited. We decided we would have to pay for a campsite but as it was now past 5pm all the campsites were full. We ended up leaving the park and driving around a near by town called Estes Village until we got permission to park in a Safeway car park for the night. We couldn't be bothered faffing around with parking the next day as we wanted to enjoy the park so we went straight to a campsite first thing and managed to get a spot although at a cost of $20 which wasn't great.

We claimed our spot at the campsite and headed off to do a hike, we had found a 9mile hike to Sky Pond via lots of other lakes and water falls in one of the mountains and decided to do that one. The hike was amazing we passed an enormous water fall and then followed it up the mountain someway as it snaked along, it was incredibly loud to the point where you almost had to shout over it to be heard. The views as we climbed higher were awe inspiring you could see for miles across valleys filled with lush greenery and surrounded by towering snow capped mountains. It was a beautiful day with not a cloud in sight and we were having a great time. We befriended a chipmunk, which we named Alvin, naturally, who followed us quite a way up the mountain, i'll try and upload the video of Alvin although i've so far failed at uploading any videos! As we got further up the mountain it got considerably colder and we found ourselves slipping and sliding over big patches of snow. We were completely unprepared for this kind of terrain, i had my bright pink nike trainers on and Izzy had some walking trainers, neither had much grip so it was a bit tricky. We pressed on determined to reach the Sky Pond. We arrived at Lock Lake and were taken aback by the views, the lake was surrounded by snowy mountain peaks and we were near the top of the mountain so these weren't too high up making for stunning views. We decided here would be an ideal place to have lunch before setting off again. However it wasn't long after we set off again that we realised there was no way we would complete the hike. The snow we were walking through was knee deep in places and although frozen every so often you would fall through and have to claw your way out! We turned back and added a different route on to the end of our hike as we had a couple of hours of sunlight left. In total we hiked for 6 and a half hours up steep mountain terrain and snow, and we could definitely feel it!

That evening we were pleased to see someone had left some firewood (which you have to pay for) in our fire pit so we lit a fire and toasted marshmallows. I utilised all my experience of fire making from when we lived in Sweden and i'm pleased to say it worked as the fire started no problem. We made the mistake of putting our extra paper balls in the fire so that they didn't blow away and we ended up smoking out half of the campsite. We absolutely stank of bonfire which meant the whole van did as well as soon as we went to bed. There was also no showers in RMNP so we weren't the freshest smelling.

The next day we planned a relaxed drive across the width of the park and then we were to head towards Yellowstone. The previous day we had seen a lot of deer dotted around the park roads and even three elk lying in a field although they were quite far away. Keen to see more wildlife we asked a ranger where the best spots to see elk were and headed down that route. The drive took us through some even more incredible scenery as we were at over 12,000ft elevation. I can't put words to how amazing the views were but have a look at the photos in the adjacent folder, they don't fully capture the beauty of the scenery but they'll give you an insight. It was a scary drive with the roads snaking along the edge of huge cliffs with no wall or barrier between you and a sheer drop. Luckily we made it up and back down alive. There were loads of cyclists riding up the mountain which i thought was pretty impressive as the altitude must make the already intense climbs even harder. It looked like they had fun on the descents often going much faster than the cars that were limited to 35mph, most have them must have been pushing over 45mph! On the way out of the park we drove through a valley that holds the Colorado River, this was the area the ranger had advised for Elk spotting and it did not disappoint! We saw so many elk grazing in fields but the most impressive by far was an enormous Elk who was grazing about 1m from the roadside. We pulled over, along with every other car that passed, and took some photos, it was amazing being that close to a wild animal with nothing between us. You could see the velvet on his impressive antlers. The antlers looked like they should be heavy as they were enormous but the Elk whipped it's head around as if they were as light as a feather. Eventually the Elk got spooked, probably by the amount of people pointing cameras at it, and headed back into the forrest. We were elated at what a good spot we'd had and as we drove on we saw countless amounts of other elk, none quite as impressive as that one though!

We were on the road again and excited for Yellowstone :)