Rocky Mountain National Park: Part 2

In between our ventures to higher alpine elevation along the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain national Park we stayed in lower elevations for one day and hiked around Grand Lake and Kawuneeche Valley.

The girls picked up a junior ranger booklet and had many different activities to complete in order to receive a badge. We decided to take a hike towards the "Never Summer" Wilderness and Bowen Gulch.

 

The view to the north looked promising but the view south concerned us for rain. 

Overcast skies and mild weather was perfect for the walk and we spent most of the afternoon seeing only a handful of other people.

  

The girls worked hard to find the wildflowers in their booklet on our walk.

The junior ranger booklet was a challenge for all of us, as I know almost nothing about plants and trees.  The girls thought it was a good idea to take pictures of the items, in case we could find a ranger to identify the flowers for us.  Soon they were using my phone to document all they saw.

  

 

 

Sometimes my phone actually focuses ...... like narrow-leaf paintbrush top right.....

  

...... other times my phone ignores the desired items like the Colorado Columbine below.

The attention to flowers only lasted so long however, and Christine captured this photo below.  The girls belly laughed showing us their "flower" selfie.

 

Christine found this young Dark-eyed Junco about the same time as capturing the girls above.

Rocky Mountain National Park: Part 1

We were delayed Monday July 20th while traveling east on our way back to Kansas and unexpectedly stayed in Boise Idaho and let the girls swim at a hotel while the van's transmission fluid was changed. We had it changed the week before and the seal was faulty, resulting in a slow leak.  There were no residual effects of this problem however beyond the one day delay, and we were back on the road late afternoon the next day. With warm temperatures and our delayed travel we decided the last stop of the summer whirlwind trip would be Rocky Mountain National Park.

We pulled into Walden Colorado and found out it is claimed to be the Moose capital of Colorado. We saw this bull moose the next morning on our way to Rocky Mountain NP. We would see a handful of cow moose during our visit but this was the only bull.

This stop was not only Michaela and Danielle's first time in the park, it was also ours as well and we loved the views.  

 

 

The alpine views available from the hike almost offset the huffing and elevation sickness.

All our bellies hurt a bit after the high elevation hike, so we stayed lower in the park the second day which is described in the second post of the Rocky Mountain National Park.

The last day we ventured back to Trail Ridge Road and the Alpine. Shortly after leaving trees we found a traffic jam and found elk and bighorn sheep.  We parked the car down the road and waited for the bighorn sheep to walk toward us.

We spent the next half hour sitting along the road watching animals.

 

We sat back from these wild animals, but not everyone did. :(

There were a few small animals in the park as well.

  

Least Chipmunk, Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel, and American Pika were throughout the park.

The large animals animals were easier to find however.

 

Elk were everywhere but Bighorn Sheep were limited.