Rocky Mountain Hike. AKA: The most amazing hike.

This feels like a million years ago now, but it has to be posted. Backtracking back to our Colorado trip.... the day after we did the insane Boulder hike, we headed up to Estes Park. I had never been up there and Justin hadn't either. We really didn't know what to expect. Shoot, Justin didn't even know it was a town. He thought it was actually just a park. When we drove down the hill and saw the water and city of Estes Park, he was like WOAH. Pretty funny.

A view:

We stopped first at the Rocky Mountain national park ranger station where we met my parents. We then met with the rudest park rangers that I have ever met in my life. Usually park rangers are the most awesome people. Not these guys. They basically laughed at us for wanting to hike (Um, aren't we in like the hiking hub of the world??) because "you'll never find parking" and scoffed in our face when we wanted to go on a picnic with the kids. I seriously wanted to punch the guys. 

My parents then took the kids and went back in to Estes Park where they found an actual park where they played with the kids and had a picnic before heading back to Denver. We basically gave a silent middle finger to the park rangers and decided to try for the hike we wanted to do, anyway (courtesy of suggestion by Justin's cousin Marley, who lives in Denver and knows the hikes/area well). WHAT DO YOU KNOW? We had no problem finding parking. A-holes. 

We started in on our 10 mile trek at 10,000 feet elevation. 

The elevation was not a huge deal for us. The hike wasn't super hard... but it sure was beautiful. First of many waterfalls. 

Selfie in the rocky mountains!

First of the mountain lakes we stumbled upon. 

I don't think that anything can do the majesty justice... it's really indescribable, even via picture, from what we saw in person. 

At the very tail end of the hike, we hit a sign that pointed us to where we were going...sky pond. And the arrow went up. And it was STRAIGHT UP. It was a total scramble/rock climb from that point on. SUPER sketchy, but so cool! 

Made it to the "pond." Amazing. Probably around 11,800 feet elevation. Justin had started to feel the elevation at this point. I was still doing ok. 

We made it! But I was nervous knowing we had to do the scramble back DOWN. Eeek. 

After a snack and some water, we headed back down. And I decided to take a picture of what we had just climbed up. Trust me. It was worse than it looks.

And a picture of the sign we passed on our way up.

More beauty on the hike back...

And Elk at the very bottom. 

It was an amazing hike. Definitely not the hardest hike we've ever done, but the beauty was beyond much we've ever seen. It was so serene and pure, and just breathtaking. Wished we would have had more time to do more hikes in the Rocky's. Seriously amazing.