2 Days in Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park is one of my favorite national parks that I've been to so far. I absolutely love Colorado in general, and despite this being my third trip to Colorado, it was my first time visiting Rocky Mountain National Park. Here's how we spent two days in the park-

*Keep in mind, RMNP requires a timed entry permit from the end of May- mid October. Permits can be purchased on https://www.recreation.gov/timed-entry/10086910 There are two different timed entry options, timed entry and timed entry + bear lake road. You can read a little more about what each permit covers on the website and decide which would be best for your trip :)

Day One: Gem Lake Hike and Trail Ridge Road Scenic Drive

Honestly, before going on this trip, I had read about the timed entry passes and was so proud of myself for getting them beforehand with no issues. Well turns out, I clearly didn't read into each one enough and got the wrong passes. We only had the regular timed entry permit the first day, so we were limited on which parts of the park we could go to this day. We started our day hiking Gem Lake. Gem Lake is a 3.4-mile out and back trail located near Estes Park. The trail has about 800 feet of elevation gain and had beautiful views on the way up! Gem Lake is an alpine lake situated at the turn around point of this hike. While the actual lake itself is a little underwhelming (it's more of a pond) the actual hike up had great views and the pond was a peaceful resting spot to eat a snack and hangout before heading back down.

After finishing our hike, since we were limited as to where in the park our permit allowed us to go, we decided to do some sight seeing from the car and drove Trail Ridge Road. This is a scenic drive that stretches 43-miles throughout the park and leads to the park's highest point at the Trail Ridge Road Visitor Center located at 12,183 feet of elevation.

We spent some time at the visitor's center shopping and grabbing lunch at the cafe. The views surrounding the visitor center were absolutely (literally) breathtaking! My east coast lungs were struggling a little bit but the views were so worth it.

Throughout the drive we saw so many peaks, open valleys, and elk. The views were constantly changing and there were several pulloff overlook points throughout the drive. This is a great way to see some amazing views of the park without having to do a strenuous hike!

Day Two: Bear Lake, Alberta Falls, Alpine Lake Galore

Day Two was my favorite day! Unfortunately, since I had originally pre-purchased the wrong permit ahead of time, I had to join in the permit lottery the night before day 2 and the only permit I could get this day was for the 5am-7am time slot. Originally this was kind of annoying as our hotel was about an hour from the park and we had a long day the night before, but it ended up working out great because we beat all of the crowds and the midday strorm that came rolling through! It's moments like these that really show that while it's great to plan things while traveling, going with the flow is sometimes the best way to do it!

We started day two at Bear Lake. The lake was pretty, but nowhere near compared to the other lakes we saw this day!

We did the Alberta Falls and Bear Lake combination trail which was only about 2.5 miles round trip with less than 400 feet of elevation gain. It was a very easy hike with a rewarding waterfall view!

After finishing this hike, we headed to our next hike, which was the Nymph, Dream, Emerald, and Haiyaha Lake combination trail. This hike was about 5 miles, took about 2.5 hours and is one of my favorite hikes that I've done. All of these are alpine lakes and are all beautiful in their own ways. In my opinion, the hike gets better with each lake that you hit with Lake Haiyaha being the final and craziest stop! I have never seen water this color and I truly couldn't believe my eyes when we stepped over the rocks to see the lake! If you can only do one hike in the park, this is definitely the one I recommend.

Since we got such an early start, we finished our hiking by around 1:00pm, which was perfect, because despite the clear blue skies in these pictures, by the time we were just about finished our hike it started to thunderstorm! Since rain was forecasted for the rest of the day, and we had already done about 6 hours of hiking, we decided to head into Estes Park, located right outside of RMNP to grab some lunch, walk around and do some shopping. Estes Park is a really cool town and kind of reminds me of Jackson, Wyoming. If you have a chance to stop into town I definitely recommend doing so.

I really enjoyed the two days we spent in Rocky Mountain and truly can't wait to go back, I know there's so much more of the park to explore!

Thanks for reading, and as always, there's always more to be explored :)

-nicole elizabeth