Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, Aspenglen Campground

  

Our backyard for the week in the Aspenglen Campground, right in Rocky Mountain National Park, about 5 miles from Estes Park, CO. We got lucky and got a fairly good site, other than it being a roadside pull-off. It’s $20 a night, no hookups, no dump, but there is water and flush toilets for a change. We actually even have a weak internet connection, which is better than none.

Been here a day and so far it’s been the typical high mountain weather. Clouds and a little rain off and on, then sunshine for awhile, then more clouds and rain. Hope we have a clear day to take the scenic drive to the west side of the park. Today we drove around to a couple different areas and hiked several shorter trails. Tried to find the big horn sheep, but at the ranger talk last night he said they have moved up to the higher elevations during the warmer weather. We aren’t finding upper 60’s very warm!

This is Fall River, behind our site. We walked a trail by the river last night and saw a family of wild turkeys. There were at least 6 little ones and 2 adults.

 

It was cloudy most of the day today, so our pictures aren’t good, but we walked the Alluvial Fan trail, where a flood from a broken dam in 1982 actually killed 2 people staying in Aspenglen campground, and flooded Estes Park with 6 feet of water. The area is still a jumble of dead trees and rocks that were thrown about in the flood.

We also hiked around Sprague Lake and Bear Lake, then up to Alberta Falls, a beautiful waterfall and lots of rocks.

We probably hiked about 4 miles total today, but the 9000+ elevation at the trails made it feel like more. There are 355 miles of trails in the park, and Ranger Don, from the program last night, has hiked all 355 miles. Quite impressive! We’ll be lucky if we can do 20 the entire week.

One more picture. Jim wants this to be our next tow vehicle.