Denver & Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

Nate and I had planned a mini-vacation following his graduation from Goodfellow.  He would only have about 10 days between graduation and departing for Germany, and we wanted to make the most of it.  At first, we had set our sights on seeing the Grand Canyon, but we made a last minute change of plans, and decided to go up and visit Geoff and see the Rockies instead.

We took off from San Angelo about as soon as we could, dropping off a classmate at the airport on our way (and both of them flipping the entire place the bird on the way out).  We drove up through Texas, and there wasn't much to say for it.  Dry, oil, etc.  Then briefly drove through NM before entering Colorado.

We went up and visited Geoff, who was living outside of Denver at the time.  We relaxed at his place for a while and got some camping supplies before heading out to the park the next day.

We drove up to Estes Park, and visited the town for a little while, grabbing some Starbucks, as I recall, before heading up to our first ever camping trip.  We saw some elk on the road as we were entering the park.  We drove into the camp grounds, got our camping permit, and drove up to Moriane Park Campground to set up our tent.

We walked around the park, soaking up the views of the mountains.  Geoff and his pooch joined us for a campfire.  We weren't quite prepared for how cold it would be in the Rockies in May though, so our tent and sleeping bag (yes, we only brought one) was not sufficient.  We ended up sleeping in the Stratus with the heat running most of the night.  At one point, I was quite grateful that I was in the car not the tent.  I woke up to find elk surrounding us, and let me tell you, they are a lot bigger when they are 2-3 feet away than they look like they ar from 15-20 feet away!

On our last day there, we drove up to the Alberta Falls trail.  Snow was still thick on the mountains up there, despite the moderate temperatures (and the fact that it was May!).  We walked along through the higher mountains, and soaked up the scenery.  The pics were taken with my "real" camera (not a digital), so you'll have to take my word when I say it was beautiful.  :-)

A few more pics from our hikes along the trails follow:


From our hike along the Fern Lake Trail:

  

    

Sunset views from the campground weren't too bad either:

  

We spent the last day relaxing at Geoff's then-girlfriend's place, which was a nice break from the hiking.  We took off for "home" (then California), driving through Wyoming, then Utah, the Nevada, before finally entering California.  It was a grueling drive back, and we tried to do it straight through.  We did too, aside from a small sleep break (though in the car still).  Who'd have thought we'd hit snow in the mountains of CA though?  What a drive!  But we made it back with a few days left to just relax and spend time together in CA before Nate left for Germany.