Thursday, October 22, 2015

First Hike, Part 1

Yay!  Trip pictures!  I can't wait to show you around our time at Rocky Mountain National Park last week.  

Our first big hike in the park happened on a very special day: the five year anniversary of Mr. Higgins' wedding proposal.  We started at Bear Lake and headed off on the trail toward Emerald Lake.  This hike, five years ago, was my first-ever real hike in the mountains.  Wow!


The first lake you encounter on this hike - after Bear Lake, of course - is Nymph Lake, best known for it's lily pad population.


The second lake is the best, in my opinion - ha!  It's Dream Lake.  If you go a bit further past the first "turn off" where everyone stops for pictures, you'll find our spot....  The place of the proposal.  Beyond the lake you see Flattop Mountain to the right (not at all flat at this angle) and Hallett Peak to the left (very flat looking here).


We decided not to continue to Emerald Lake.  We've been there twice now and the trail is the busiest in the park.  Also, the wind was crazy strong - and Emerald lake always gets the worst of the wind on this trail.  So, we turned off to go to Lake Haiyaha, a new place for us.

More on that later!  

The last time we were in Colorado in October - five years ago - it snowed on us!  This October was much warmer - so warm that Estes Park was much busier than we expected.  However, the warm weather meant we could do better, longer hikes on this trip.  So I have lots to show you!

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