Rocky Mountain National Park is about 35 miles west of Longmont, CO. (Longmont is about 40 miles north of Denver.) Due to the winding roads, the drive to the park takes about an hour from Longmont. Some of the views on the drive were stunning.

To get to the eastern entrance of the park, you need to drive through Estes Park. Oddly, Estes Park is not a park, but a town. A tourist trap town. It is mostly populated with restaurants, rental cabins, and souvenir stores. We stopped into the Estes Park Visitor center looking for a cancel stamp for Rocky Mountain National Park.

Rocky Mountain National Park is 415 miles of alpine meadows, lakes, and peaks. This sounds large, until you learn that Yellowstone National Park is more than 8 times larger.

We only had a few hours to drive and explore the park on this trip. The first place we stopped was Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, so Kate could get cancel stamps and stickers. Sadly, they only had the single sticker, not the sticker page.

The first part of the visit was driving to Bear Lake. This stop was rudely interrupted by elk. Actually, it was more rudely interrupted by Kate screeching to a halt and U-turning to see the elf. Sadly, this is where we found out that the batteries to John’s camera were dead, so no DSLR pictures on this visit.

Bear Lake was mostly frozen over with warning signs about thin ice, but some brave (or stupid) souls had built snowmen in the middle of the lake.

You will be stunned to learn that Kate took a selfie at Bear Lake.

Bear Lake also had an elevation marker on the Ranger Station. It is a higher elevation than we will be staying in Yellowstone – 9475 feet.

The drive on the spur road out to Bear Lake and back had some fantastic views.

The eastern loop had great views too, but there were few places to stop, and the sky was more overcast.

Near the end of the loop, we reached the alpine meadow. We stopped because we saw some ducks in the pond by the meadow, and Kate thought she saw a beaver. The ducks turned out to be mallards, but the parks signs were interesting.

It was too early in the season for the bighorn sheep to come down to graze, but the Wyoming ground squirrels were out and about. They look like pint sized prairie dogs. (These are ground squirrels, as in dirt squirrels. These are not ground squirrels, as in ground beef.)

On the way out of the loop, we stopped at the other visitor center, Fall River Visitor Center, to check for a page of national park stickers. Sadly, there were no sticker pages at this visitor center either. We did see a Black-billed Magpie in the parking lot. They are a striking mix of blue, black, and white.