The end of Nomad Summer took us to Estes Park so we could spend a solid amount of time exploring Rocky Mountain National Park. We had only spent a half a day at RMNP before this trip, so we were really excited to let ourselves take a slow and easy pace at doing as much as we could in the Estes Park / Rocky Mountain National Park area, and that’s exactly what we did.
We Got Off to An Interesting Start…
We arrived in Estes Park a couple of hours later than we intended. We hit road closures, traffic delays, we thought we had some sort of leak coming from the camper… it was just a weirdly stressful day of driving. Matt got the camper backed in and I got the kids in and started doing my inside setup and Charleigh exclaimed, “Mama, I think Liam pooped…” I took a peek in his diaper and he had not. In fact it was our campground that smelled like literal shit. Matt talked to the staff and we got varying responses from ‘a septic pipe burst – but is fixed now’ to ‘that’s just what the mountains smell like…‘. It was very confusing and they ended up moving us to a different site that smelled slightly better, but still wasn’t great. But the good news was that we didn’t have a leak! But, even though the drive was stressful and the campsite was stinky, we were very excited to be in the mountains.
Exploring Rocky Mountain National Park
I learned a lot about Estes Timed Entry on this trip and how I need to prioritize what to get the most out of time in RMNP. We hiked to Alberta Falls (accidentally twice), Mills Lake, Bear Lake, Calypso Cascades, Lily Lake (three times), the Tundra Communities Trail and the Alpine Ridge Trail. We saw and did so many beautiful things. I can’t wait to write more detailed posts on these experiences.
We were gracious with ourselves that we have a 2 and 4 year old and they don’t want to spend every single hour hiking. That said, they were still total troopers and killed it on several hikes – CJ all on foot, Liam mostly being carried in the Deuter, but some on foot. I still felt like we managed to see quite a bit while we were here.
We Met Up with Friends and Explored the Town Too
Somehow we managed to time our trip so perfectly that we got to see several friends! I have a friend from high school who works for the NPS and she had been out there for about 6 months at that point. We were able to meet up with her for dinner and we had such a lovely time with her! A friend of mine that I used to work with at the brewery moved back to Colorado and he’s leading rafting expeditions out of Estes so he happened to have one end in the perfect time to meet up for coffee! Then, Matt’s best friend from college was there on vacation with his lovely wife and her whole family. We met up at her parents’ place and had the most lovely dinner. Her family was so sweet and kind and welcomed us and the chaos that a 2 and 4 year old can bring to a dinner.
While waiting for our timed entry, we did hit up some things around town too. We loved the food we ate at The Rock Inn, Indian Bites, and Estes Park Brewing Company. The Indian food was so good we ate there twice. We also had Haley’s Ice Cream twice, which was super expensive, but good enough we had it twice.
We found lots of little shops that we loved. They have a really sweet Christmas Shop that had some really fun and unique decor – these Christmas-lovers definitely bought some stuff here. We got some fun shirts, home decor, and stickers at random stores. The two shops that I loved the most, though, were Cliffhanger Books and Red Rose Rock Shop. Cliffhanger Bookstore is a used bookstore that is filled with books that have been donated or retired from the local library. It’s run by volunteers and all the profits go back into the public library there. They had a decent selection of children’s book and each one was only a dollar. We went twice and I let Charleigh pick out a few books and I gathered some really cool books semi-specific to the region/cultures of the region. It was just a really cool stop! Then, Red Rose Rock Shop was an almost daily shop. Charleigh and I are both collecting rocks and crystals and so we had so much fun scoping out a spot to find new ones. She got special rocks for hikes she did too, so it became basically a daily adventure.
Then, across a little gravel path from the rock shop is Coffee on the Rocks. It’s an incredible little coffeeshop with delicious coffee, a stunning outdoor space with a mountain view and a pond filled with ducks. They even sell duck feed for kids to feed the ducks. I have to admit, we fed no ducks, but the kids enjoyed watching them all the same. It was a lovely little stop.
The End of Nomad Summer
Ending our 24-day trip in Colorado and Utah was hard. It was something we had in the making over 6 months. It was everything we expected and so much more. It’s the longest the four of us have traveled together in one stretch, it was our longest camping trip and it was just a trip that left us feeling really connected. It wasn’t perfect or always easy, but we learned a lot. We had far more fun than frustration and see so many new things. We watched our kids thrive in certain situations and discover likes vs dislikes. We watched Charleigh and Liam’s vocabularies to expand to learn new words and phrases like gondola, aspen, tundra, pika, etc. Words that they learned through experience. It lit a fire of desire for a deeper, longer experience like this again and again. I am still holding onto the dream of homeschooling from the road someday, and this only confirmed that. Life is pretty sweet.
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