Rocky Mountain National Park

Today we visited Rocky Mountain National Park.  Instead of taking the scenic drive we opted to take a hike and visit four lakes and a water fall.  We have spent so much time in the Rockies the last few days, we figured the scenery along the scenic drive would be much the same as what we have already seen.

Our first lake was Bear Lake, which was right at the trailhead.

We continued from there to Nymph Lake.

From Nymph Lake we hiked further to Dream Lake.  Along the way we had to trek through a little snow and ice, but it wasn't too bad.

Here I am standing along the snow covered and icy banks of Dream Lake.

Our final lake was Emerald Lake.  To get to Emerald Lake we had to hike through considerably more snow and ice that we are accustomed to seeing in mid June.  It was a little slippery, but lots of fun, especially when we skated across the ice more than we walked through it.


There were some very narrow stretches of trail that were solid snow and ice with some steep climbs, but we managed to make it to Emerald Lake and back without either of us falling!

Emerald Lake still had a thin sheet of ice across much of its surface.

Upon our return to the trailhead we followed another trail nearby to Alberta Falls.  By the time we were ready to leave the falls we were pretty beat.  Between the terrain, altitude and inclines we felt we had gotten our exercise for the day.  We opted to take the lazy way back to our van via the shuttle bus.