Chapter 6: Our First Day in the Rockies

6:00am. Moraine Campground. Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here we are -- waking up in the crisp, clean air of the Rocky Mountains.

Our plan today: a quick breakfast and then off to Bear Lake for a hike.

9:30am. Moraine Campground. Rocky Mountain National Park

We are so unbelievably bad at camping.

It's taken us more than three hours -- yes, three hours -- to prepare, eat, and clean up our meal. We have no idea how to do what we are doing.

In comparison, there's a high-school youth group camping next to us. At 7:00 a.m., the head counselor threw a bag of bagels on the picnic table. By 7:15, the whole group was in the van and off to start their day.

On the plus side, breakfast was pretty tasty. On the negative side, water (for cooking AND cleaning) has to be hauled 50 yards up a steep hill, and we don't have a bucket so we are just refilling water bottles and running down and up the hill constantly.

Breakfast with a view

The prettiest place I've ever made pancakes

Cleaning up took the most time. We are a 20-minute walk from the dishwashing station, so we are trying to clean everything here onsite, while simultaneously trying to adhere to the Bear Safety rules and leaving no crumbs or traces of moisture on the ground. This is cleaner than we are at home.

If there's a bright side, I learned that my kids are apparently pretty good at balancing rocks.

Why do I ever buy toys for my kids
if they like rocks just as well anyway?

10:00am. Visitor's Center. Rocky Mountain National Park.

"If you guys want to hike at Bear Lake, you need to get an earlier start."

That's the ranger telling us we are idiots.

It's too late to get parking at Bear Lake, and we don't want to be at the whim of shuttle buses, so we've changed our plans and are heading to Cub Lake. It's more of a "beginner" hike anyway, which is probably a good idea.

10:30am. Trailhead to Cub Lake.

We luckily found the last parking space in this lot and are finally ready to do some HIKING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

According to the map, it's about 2.5 miles from here to Cub Lake. After reaching the lake, we can choose to either come back along our path, or continue in a big loop past "The Pool" for a total of about six miles.

Our planned route. We are cleverly avoiding "Steep Mountain"

I think I heard somewhere that the average walking pace is about 3 mph, so that would be about an hour out and an hour back. Maybe even faster since half of my family runs cross-country. So our plan is to do the whole loop, with a "backup plan" of hiking for an hour in and and hour back. Either way, we should be back by lunch time.

12:00 Noon. Trail to Cub Lake.

We are unbelievably bad at hiking.

Ninety minutes into this hike and we've nearly run out of water and snacks, and we haven't even reached Cub Lake yet. We passed some hikers a bit ago, and they said we still have a mile to go. So somehow we've only hiked 1.5 miles or about a mile an hour. If we were climbing a giant mountain, I'd get that, but most of our hike so far has been flat.

Some of us want to give up and go back, but we figure that we're this far along, it would be a shame not so see the lake. So forward we go.

We are apparently not moving at a 3mph pace.

12:30p. Cub Lake

We made it!

Relaxing on a boulder in Cub Lake

It took more than twice as long as I guessed it would, but at last we are here. The lake and the surrounding mountains are beautiful. We are taking a break to finish the snacks and just relax for a bit.

Trying to see if we can get an Uber

We feel so proud of ourselves that we're going to take the "long way around," and finish the loop instead of heading back the way we came. "We're in the Rockies, let's see all the things we can!"

1:30p. Trail back from Cub Lake

It's still taking us quite a long time to make progress, but now we are going downhill, which is MUCH easier. And it's a good thing we took the loop in this (clockwise) direction, as the trail on this side of the loop is VERY steep. I'm not sure we would have persevered if we had come up this side.

A nice young woman, hiking in the opposite direction as us, paused in her hike to take our picture.

The day is looking up.

2:30p. "The Pool."

We've reached the bottom of the valley and are at chilling for a few minutes next to a small pond that lets out into a stream. We still have over a mile to get back to the van, but the rest of the loop is completely flat, as the trail follows a small stream. We are out of water and snacks but this hike is almost done so we should be fine.

3:15p. The Final leg of the Cub Lake Loop

OMG IT IS SO HOT AND DUSTY ON THIS TRAIL.

Everyone is just about ready to lie down and let the bears come get us. This "beginner hike" has beaten us down beyond recognition. The van is still at least 1/2 mile ahead, but the trail is now kind of a road, so we've sent the two teenagers ahead to get the van and come get us. Maybe we can survive our first day of camping.

3:30p. Still on the last part of the trail

Remember that nice young woman who took our picture a little while back? She just PASSED US AGAIN. She walked 3/4 of the loop in the time it took us to walk 1/4 of it. And we were doing a DOWNHILL part of the trail. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

4:00p. Back at the Trailhead

WE DID IT! We are in the van and enjoying its sweet, sweet air conditioning. We've learned a lot today; mainly, that we know nothing about what we are doing. But the hard part of the day is over. Back to camp for some relaxation and dinner.

6:30p. Estes Park, CO.

After chilling out at the campsite for a while, we decided that preparing dinner was beyond our capabilities. So we've driven down into Estes Park for some siteseeing. Fun fact about Estes Park: 80% of the businesses sell either ice cream, taffy, or ice cream and taffy. So for dinner, we had ice cream. For dessert: taffy.

The boys have earned a dinner like this

7:30p. Sprague Lake, CO.

After the beat-down we received at the hands of the Cub Lake loop earlier in the day, we needed an outdoorsy victory before the end of the day, so we headed over to Sprague Lake for a short hike.

This is the face I made when my wife suggested another hike.

Fortunately, the Sprague Lake Trail is is a completely flat, 1/2-mile loop, in which we were never out of sight of the parking lot.

This is WAY more our speed. 

As the sun set behind the mountains, we had a nice time circling the lake, taking photos and generally jagging around.

Some Musials and some mountains.

10:00p. Moraine Campground.

Our first full day in the Rocky Mountains. It was an eye-opening and humbling experience, but we did it. Time for bed. (And a few more deposits into the vault.)