Rocky Mountain National Park Trip: Travel Day and Arrival

There's a race company called Vacation Races that does a series of races at or around National Parks. I've been wanting to run one for a long time and was eyeing the Yellowstone Half Marathon and doing a family vacation there after the race. I mentioned maybe stopping at Rocky Mountain National Park on our way and Ty suggested we go to Rocky Mountain National Park instead because it would be an easier drive. I looked at the Rocky Mountain Half Marathon and it was the day after my birthday which seemed meant to be. So Rocky Mountain Half and family vacation it was! 

We left on Thursday, July 28th. Our loose plan was maybe 6 hours of driving that day and 4.5 the next so we could make it on Friday in time for packet pickup. The kids did amazing in the car and we ended up driving about 8 hours and making it to Limon, CO. It definitely helped that they were loving the book we were reading together, The War That Saved My Life. Every time I finished a chapter, they'd ask for another one. There was also lots of playing and some tablet time. A friend recommended I make sure to stay really hydrated on the days leading up to the race which would help me with the altitude since we wouldn't arrive in time for me to acclimate before the race. I may have taken that a bit too seriously because I spent a lot of the drive drinking and we had to stop every 1.5-2 hours for restroom breaks. Thankfully, Ty was super sweet and never complained about all the stopping. In Limon we picked a hotel with an indoor swimming pool but it was super chilly. I really didn't want to get in, but the kids really wanted me to play with them, so I did.

Elise picked out a watercolor book for the drive and even got herself a cup with a lid to use for her paintbrush all on her own!

Elise fell asleep in the hotel room with the lights still on!

Friday was my birthday, the 29th! I did a short little 2 mile shake out run from the hotel while Ty and the kids ate breakfast. When I got back we packed up and stopped off at Starbucks for my free birthday drink. Since it was free, I went with a venti rather than my usual tall. Add in driving into the mountains and I was very excited and jacked up on the drive! We arrived right at 11:00 when packet pick up started so we went straight there. The kids were really excited and we got some cool pictures at the expo. Ty asked if I wanted to go out to eat for lunch since it was my birthday. What I really wanted to do was hike and have a picnic. We headed for the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center and found out they were doing timed entries into the park. You had to get on at 5pm the night before to get a slot to enter the park the following day. I could have gone on in June to reserve slots for our trip, but I didn't realize that. I was pretty disappointed. I did a lot of research before going to the Grand Canyon and then once there, realized everything was pretty obvious and I didn't need to do as much research as I had. So this go around I didn't read as much so we missed out on entering the park that first day. But we had no issues the rest of our trip. 

My giant coffee!

Race expo!

We watched the short video at the visitor's center, did some souvenir shopping, picked up Junior Ranger Booklets for the kids, and then headed to the YMCA of the Rockies to do some hiking outside the park. We went to the information center at the Y, found out our Y membership meant nothing there, but we could hike there, and had a picnic at one of the picnic tables. When we were done eating we went on probably a 2 mile hike. The woman at the visitor's center recommended we go mini golf so on our way back to the parking lot we stopped to do that. We got our first hole in and it started raining. Ty suggested we wait it out under an awning and we made it under the awning right as it started hailing. We watched Wyoming Ground Squirrels running around and jumping into their burrows which was adorable. At the time, looking at our Junior Ranger Booklets, we thought they might be pikas. We later realized they were not. Elise sat in my lap and worked on her booklet, completing almost all the pages. 

Doing the first hole of mini golf.

Carter catching hail.

When the rain cleared for a bit, we hightailed it to the car and it was late enough, we could check in at our campsite. Ty got lots of information from the woman in the office. She gave him a booklet I looked through and dog eared pages in. It was still raining a bit so we decided to wait to put our tent up. I saw something about a pika hunt in the booklet which sounded awesome so we decided to do that. We picked up a brochure at the Visitor's Center in downtown Estes Park and started our hunt. There were 12 bronze pika statues located along the river walk and downtown. We looked for them and stopped in at any shops that interested us. There were also some musical instrument areas we stopped at for the kids to play. At 5:00 I was logged on and ready to make reservations to enter RMNP the next day. We decided to do the Bear Lake Corridor first because it seemed like it was the most popular and then we'd know if we wanted to go back there again or just reserve general park admittance after that. To give me time to get back after the race we went with a 10-12 entry time. 

We put on some warm clothes to go back out because it got chilly with the rain and hail.

Ty told Carter he looked like Santa Claus or an elf.

The view at our campsite!

Elise posing with hail at our campsite.

Posing with the river when we did the river walk.

We also saw lots of hummingbirds on the river walk.

We made it to pikas 7 and 8 and couldn't find them. It was past dinner time and we were hungry, so we decided to get some food and call it a day on the pika hunt. I really wanted to eat at an Italian restaurant we had passed called Mama Rosa's, but I was worried it was too long of a walk back and then we'd have to wait and I didn't think the kids would make it. I picked a pizza place and we sat outside to eat with a gorgeous view of the mountains. For dessert I wanted a caramel apple so we went into a treats shop. Elise had a bit of a tough time that she didn't get to have a caramel apple because she said she wasn't hungry and wouldn't eat dinner. We gave her lots of warnings that there would be no treats if she chose not to eat dinner, but she wouldn't budge. She spent the whole walk back to the car and then the drive to our campsite pouting and very angry with me. Thankfully she got over it a while after we returned to our campsite. We got our tent set up and then the kids and I went to the playground to play. The playground may have been the highlight of the trip for the kids. A bunch of kids would walk over to the playground each morning and evening and there would be a huge group of kids playing. Carter spent a lot of time on our trip worrying that he was going to miss out playing with his friends. We all went to bed around 8:30 which would have been 9:30 our time. This was the noisiest night on the campground. There was a guy at a campsite nearby talking so loudly, I could follow his whole side of the conversation. Then there were some men howling like wolves partway into the night. My guess was with it being a Friday night, there was a fair amount of drinking involved. For the race we were told everyone needed to be parked by 5:15 for the 6am race start. I set an alarm for 4:30am which I told myself wouldn't be that bad because it was really like 5:30 our time. I was a bit nervous about navigating out of our campground in the dark without waking anyone up and then finding my way to the race start. I woke up at 3:50 the next morning and couldn't fall back to sleep, bummer! But all turned out well.

Eating pizza for dinner.