It all started with a coworker, who shall remain anonymous, posting pictures of bunnies followed by nature in Colorado back in early May:
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Hanging Lake | Maroon Bells Lake |
Just like that I was hooked on taking a vacation and doing a road trip to Denver, Colorado. It was only just about 750 miles away from me, roughly 10-12 hours of driving, easily feasible for me to do it in a day. So, I began hatching my plan vacation:
- need to be at least a week, 2 days will be spent driving - yay road trip!
- need at least 2 days of hiking
- must visit Hanging Lake and Maroon Bells Lake
- check out Rocky Mountain National Park
- be away from computers and work for the week - aka no Slack!
The optimal time came about to be middle of July. I decided to do the trip between 14th to 22nd of July, right smack in middle of Summer Black Friday extravaganza. So I threw in my vacation request at work and started to plan out where to stay, what to do when, etc.
2-3 weeks before the trip, my plan started forming a coherent shape after looking up Airbnb:
- drive out on Saturday morning
- do a guided hike on Sunday
- tour Denver on Monday
- drive up to Fort Collins and check it out on Tuesday
- hike at Rocky Mountain National Park on Wednesday and Thursday
- do another guided hike at Boulder on Friday
- tour Denver again on Saturday
- head back out on Sunday
Sweet! Now I had something to work with, while stuff might change with no indiction, having some sort of plan is always nice 😀. Of course plans always change, for example instead of heading out at 5am on Saturday, I left around 6.30am 🙄🤣.
Day 1:
Drive was pretty much straight, I-15 N to I-70 E and voila Denver!
Along the way, I stopped at scenic views at: Salt Wash View Area in Utah, Idaho Springs, Silver Plume & Georgetown in Colorado:
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Panoramic view of Salt Wash View Area, Utah |
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Panoramic view of Idaho Springs, Colorado |
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Silver Plume & Georgetown info board | Look at that green stuff!!! |
Day 2:
And totally
not according to plan, weather forecast said lightning and thunderstorm for Sunday, cancelling my guided hike at
Mount Bierstadt. So Sunday was dedicated to sleeping in and exploring the Denver Botanic Gardens, which by the way was just beautiful! Over thousands of different types of plants spanning across the world, various kinds of desert cactus to cocoa trees in the tropical forests to carnivorous venus flytrap. Also the park had squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits roaming around.
Day 3:
Monday was dedicated to visiting my friend and coworker and then exploring the Denver Nature & Science Museum before heading off to Fort Collins.
Day 4:
Tuesday was dedicated to exploring Fort Collins - getting brunch at the iconic Silver Grill Cafe (opened in 1933, they kept expanding to include more rooms, also their food is just amazing to put you into food coma) with coworker, walking the streets and checking out the shops, especially the Rocket Fizz store (good gosh their soda & taffy selections!) and the Food Truck (and puppy) rally.
Day 5 - Part 1:
Wednesday I drove to Rocky Mountain National Park to do my hikes, finally! Since this is my first solo attempt, I decided to pack everything needed to at least survive a night, if I got lost 🤞. I decided to check out the Cub Lake trail since the parking lot at Park & Ride was full and they were making us turn back. So I found the first parking spot available enroute to the Cub Lake trailhead. Then walked about a mile to the trailhead before embarking on my first hike of the vacation! It was a gorgeous day, beautiful weather and lush greenery all around me. There was a warning of mountain lions being spotted, so I kept a group in front/back of me most of the time. After reaching the Cub Lake (wasn't really all that fancy), I decided to head back taking a different route that dropped me back at civilization at the Fern Lake trailhead. Did I mention I was out of water before reaching the civilization? I only carried two liters of water with me... No filling station on the hike!
Day 5 - Part 2:
After recovering from the hike, I decided to drive up the Trail Ridge Road to get the scenic outlook of the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was breathtaking views from the various vantage points they had set up, while I couldn't get off at the 11,000 ft mark to walk up to the summit (I caught the altitude sickness and was having a bad headache, plus it was really cold up at the top), I drove on hoping to loop back to the entrance. Except the entrance never came just a different exit point... So I flipped a u-turn and drove back the scenic route again to head back to Fort Collins :doh:.
Day 6:
Thursday I went back to the Rocky Mountain National Park to hike the Emerald Lake trail, except this time, I brought with me six liters of water! Mwahahaha!!! Once again I parked at the Cub Lake trailhead and caught two shuttles to get to the Bear Lake trailhead. I dubbed this hike as the Hike of Lakes because of the various lakes I passed along before reaching the Emerald Lake - Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and then Emerald Lake. This hike started off at around 9-10,000 ft and had steep incline, so I was pretty quickly out of breath from high altitude, steep incline and
carrying six liters of water! Right before I reached the Emerald Lake, I was able to record a gang of elk crossing my path to head over to the lake to drink water. On my way back, I turned to hike up to Lake Hiyaha (more uphill and then crossing rocky terrain) and then cross the forests to get reach Glacier Gorge trailhead to catch the shuttles back to Cub Lake trailhead. And this time, I only consumed about four liters of water... I really need to have a chat with my body, I mean seriously making me carry all that water up and down the mountain, my legs/shoulders/back complained much to my brain.
Day 7:
Friday was supposed to be my next guided hike that I booked from Airbnb, but again it got cancelled due to something coming up for the guide. So instead I got my friend to drive us to the Maroon Bells Lake in Aspen... about 4 hours of driving... whelp! My bad!!! But Maroon Bells was the most beautiful place I've seen on this trip! Even though the weather was cloudy and it was raining, and despite it looking nothing like the sunnier version of the picture my coworker sent to me, I fell in love with that place. Coding from this location would totally be awesome, I meant there is no connection up there, so is pretty isolated, as long as I don't inadvertently create a psychotic AI while being lost in the charm of the nature (anyone catch the hint of Ex Machina plot?). But yeah, 4-5 hours to get there and then another 4-5 hours to get back, so next time, definitely stop either on the way to Denver or back, but stay at Aspen for a day or two because it is just simply gorgeous!
Day 8:
I decided to head back on Saturday and almost got swept away by rain-hail thunderstorm about 30-40 miles outside of Cedar City, Utah. Mother Nature had found a wonderful time to just test how well my heart could handle cardio level exertion while driving through that tempest.
In conclusion, my escape to Colorado for a week was just awesome (except for maybe the humidity... 😅💦). Driving to and from was amazing going 80-90 MPH mostly (except for the tempest with rain/hail in Utah on the way back). The lush greenery all around the place is just simply breathtaking (and I made sure to take a lot of breaths, mhmmm all that Oxygen). I got to see one of the two destinations I wanted to check out, only way to get to Hanging Lake from Denver was to drive to Glenwood Springs and then drive back 8 miles to Denver. Plus I found out hiking that one included going up 1000 ft over rocky terrain over 1.2 miles, so ummm saving that for my next visit, same with the 11,000 ft summit view point on the Trail Ridge Road scenic drive. I met bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks, puppies, cats, aggressive elks, marmot, cows, ostrich, goats and was warned about bears, mountain lions, aggressive elks and moose (pretty sure a mountain lion was stalking me on Day 6 during my hike through the forests past Lake Hiyaha).