I'm not sure it's even safe to breathe outside in this heat and humidity.
So, I will just safely sit inside my house and reminisce on days of cooler climates and much more beautiful views as I continue our Colorado trip report.
Our first full day in Estes Park we saw a doe and two fawns right next to the cabin - our first up close animal experience of the trip. We then drove into the National Park and did one of our favorite hikes. I am pretty sure this makes the third time to do this particular hike: Nymph, Dream, and Emerald Lakes. I remember the first time John took me to Estes Park. This is what Dream Lake looked like on that occasion:
Let's all sit and think what it would feel like to be in some snow right now. It's hard to even imagine.
I digress.
This time of year things are thawed out:
I think it's only about a 4-mile hike with only a 600-foot elevation gain, so a good hike to start with.
That evening I witnessed some Sky Mall paraphernalia in action. Do you ever see things in that catalogue and think who in the world ever purchases any of these things? Well, The YMCA of the Rockies does, that's who.
Yep. We watched "Night at the Museum" on an inflatable movie screen direct from Sky Mall. (It did get darker, but I had to take the picture while we still had light.) We made it through the entire movie, but let me just remind anyone who might be attending this activity at the Y later in the summer: it gets cold in the mountains at night. Good thing we brought a couple blankets!
Our second day was chock full of activity. We drove over to Indian Peaks National Forest to hike to Mitchell and Blue Lakes. It's a good 6-mile hike, and it was my favorite hike of the week (OK, I admit, we only did three hikes in the week, but I was not in the mood for a boot camp vacation this year). Blue Lake is pictured at the top of the blog now. Absolutely beautiful. Here's another photo of it.
Now, I love hiking. I love the journey, the view from the top of the mountain, and getting to see alpine lakes and waterfalls and streams and flowers. I do not enjoy driving great distances every day during a vacation to get to the trailheads. That may be why, more than any other reason, I would elect not to go on a hike every single day when we're in Estes Park...or visiting other parks or forests in the country. It took about an hour to drive to the trailhead for Mitchell and Blue Lakes.
In the end, it was well worth it. Just not every day.
I might have also burned out a little on the car rides because straight after getting back from this hike, John decided to take me and a few other family and friends off-roading. It was fun, it was scary, it was bumpy. We drove down a 10-mile off-road trail and it took an hour to do that. My back was not the same the next day.
That makes me feel old, but I'm just telling the truth.
Thus the hesitation to get back in that truck day after day for long rides.
If that was not enough for one day, we all (I think mostly John and his dad) decided about 20 minutes after we got back to the YMCA that we should invite everyone (that is, everyone we knew staying at the YMCA that week - us, John's parents, John's sister, John's aunt and cousin, and two other families who are not exactly related but are at many of the same family functions as we are) to come have a picnic at Sprague Lake.
And we needed to get everything together and leave in about 15 minutes in order to get there and start cooking and eat before it got dark.
Was it possible? Could so many people be contacted, and food be gathered up, and the drive to the lake be made in time to picnic before sundown?
I'm starting to get worn out just thinking about it all, so we'll have to continue this saga tomorrow. Until then, stick your head in the freezer, or eat a lot of popsicles, or lay in an ice bath, but for heaven's sake do not go outside! (Unless you're in the mountains where it's not 106 degrees.)
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