Denver/Boulder

May 8-10th: Kansas City, MO > Denver, CO

Greetings from Colorful Colorado!

May 8th:

We arrived late afternoon in Boulder and stayed with one of my friends from college. Luckily we had a local tour guide to show us all the cool spots in Boulder. After settling in we drove down to the Pearl Street in Boulder, which is the main shopping and restaurant area. We ate dinner at Avanti Food Hall on the rooftop with beautiful views of the mountains. After dinner we went over to Rosetta Hall to try to sit on their rooftop patio but it was packed! So we went directly next door to Rio Grande Mexican and sipped margaritas on the roof until the sun went down.

May 9th:

First hiking day! We drove a quick 20 minutes to El Dorado Springs State Park. We planned to hike the 7 mile Continental Divide Trail via Rattlesnake Gulch but the upper loop was closed due to Raptor nesting, so the trail only ended up being 3 miles. We added on an extra 6 by doing the El Dorado Canyon trail. The weather was awesome but I did get sunburnt. Intense UVs!

We ventured into the Denver city center for dinner. We found a random spot for dinner on the 16th Street Mall, the main shopping area in downtown. We did a bit of a driving tour afterwards through the entertainment district and saw a giant REI- I think we should have stopped to shop there. Denver has a variety of neighbors, LoDo, Highlands, etc. We didn’t really have time to explore them all, or get Voodoo donuts…but we did get Sweet Cow ice cream, which is a local spot.

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May 10th:

Rocky Mountain National Park!

Finally made it out to Rocky Mountain- it was well worth the wait. We hiked to Cub Lake, which was 3 miles and continued on the trail to The Pools. Cub Lake was a pretty flat hike for the most part- the continuation to the Pools was downhill most of the way back. We did another 10 miles today. Lots of elk! Baby geese, ducks, a woodpecker. We were told by the ranger that we would be able to see moose at Cub Lake but they weren’t out today. After the hike we drove to Bear Lake, which was completely frozen over with 3 feet of snow, but the drive there was classic Rockies. We also went to Sprague Lake just up the road and it had a beautiful view of the snow covered Rockies.