We happily escaped the 120 degree Arizona heat to Colorado for a quick getaway to attend our friends’ wedding. After the weekend festivities, we had a free half day and decided to make our first visit to Rocky Mountain National Park and explore some popular trails.
After a weekend of wedding festivities in Black Hawk, we took a super scenic drive following snow-capped mountains the whole way to Estes Park. There were quite a few places along the way we wanted to stop, but since we were short on time we kept driving to reach our main destination.
Since we already have a trip planned to hit the park’s backcountry in a few weeks, we decided to check out a few of the “touristy” spots that we figured would be very busy over the holiday weekend we were returning. We also figured that because it was still early and there would still be quite a bit of snow, the trails wouldn’t be too crowded…
Well, we were wrong. It was still packed.
Despite that, we thought the crowds would only get worse as summer went on, sucked it up, and made plans to do the short hike to Dream Lake. We stopped at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center to check out trail conditions and then made our way to the Bear Lake Trailhead Park & Ride (we were told the parking lot was full but realized if we waited around could have found a spot) to catch the shuttle.
The Bear Lake Trailhead is the busiest in the park and is the starting point for tons of hikes. We really wanted to go to the Loch but didn’t think we would have time before we had to head to the airport, so we settled on the short hike to Dream Lake.
The “easy” hike wasn’t as easy as we thought with the lovely combination of altitude and very little sleep over the weekend. We powered through and took a short break at Nymph Lake.
We continued on up the trail and were greeted with quite a bit of snow left around Dream Lake!
It’s easy to see why Dream Lake is one of the most popular spots in the park. It’s gorgeous and very photogenic. I’m sure it would be awesome to photograph at sunrise or sunset when there are also much less people around.
We found a spot away from the crowds to chill for a bit, but decided to head back to the trailhead pretty quickly so we could do another quick hike. We would love to return to Dream Lake during the off season – we even saw quite a few trout!
We made our way back to the Bear Lake Trailhead and since we had a little bit of time left decided to hit Alberta Falls, which also starts off from Bear Lake. The hike was even shorter, less steep, and more in the forest than the hike to Dream Lake. With snowmelt in full force, the falls were absolutely raging.
We motored back down the trail and took a slight shortcut to the Glacier Gorge trailhead instead to catch the shuttle back to our car.
We can’t wait to return in a few weeks for our backpacking trip!
