Wednesday/Thursday

Our campsite
The view of Fall River from our campsite
Me and Phillip at the top of Alberta Falls
View from the summit of Deer Mountain
View from Alpine Ridge on Trail Ridge Road

Wednesday - drove into the Rocky Mountain National Park by the southwest entrance via Hwy 34. This highway was closed on Tuesday because of snow, but our timing was just right and we were able to go over the pass. Unbelievable! We were above the tree line and the views were great. We made several short hikes (Colorado River Trail, Alluvial Fan, Alberta Falls and Bear Lake) today and camped at Aspenglen campground. Just for the record, site 44 is the best and we were lucky enough to get this site right on the Fall River. We used Mom's blow-up mattress and it worked great. However, we are not prepared for the cold weather - not enough long-sleeve shirts, fleece tops, blankets, etc. We spent most of the night shivering. At sunrise we started the car and warmed up (we couldn’t during the night because the headlights are always on with my car and the lights would disturb other campers).

Thursday – as Phillip and I sat in Outback eating a steak dinner we both decided that we’ve not been this tired since we hiked into the Havasupai Canyon. We hiked up Deer Mountain. According to the map it is 6.2 miles roundtrip….but going up it sure seemed like it was further than 3.1 miles up! The cool thing about this trail is that it has great views all the way up and at the summit all around. On the way up the mountain the sun was shining and we stripped down to short sleeve shirts. On the way down, it clouded over, thundered (yes, I was scared to death because we were at 10,000 feet), sleeted and then snowed. Tonight we are in a hotel – we both need a good night sleep.