President's Day Hiking!

For our day off on President's day, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park for some hiking. It was a nice day although the weather looked menacing at times:


On the way into the park there was a herd of Elk grazing along the side of the road:


Austin and I were the only ones who wanted to get out of the car for a picture.


Not long after we came across these 3 deer also grazing in the sunshine.

After parking in the lot, we headed out on foot along the trails. The boys noted that the guardrails that usually come to your waist were covered with snow in some places.


This bridge, for instance, already had a lot of snow pack such that the rails came to our knees.

We came to a fork in the road and decided to first head towards Alberta falls.


Behind the boys is the gorge where water from the falls usually flows.


Not surprisingly, Alberta falls (left edge of picture) was completely frozen and covered over in snow.


After visiting the falls, we headed back down the trail towards Bear Lake.



Bear Lake was solidly frozen and beautiful. We stopped for some photos before walking across.




These pictures of Bear Lake reminded me of a smaller version of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. Below is a picture I took before walking across Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada, 5 years ago.
After leaving Bear Lake, we headed back towards the car. In this picture we are making Lisa nervous while tennis shoe ice skating across a frozen stream.
Lastly, as we were leaving we came across a herd of big horn sheep grazing along the side of the road. None of us got out of the car for these pictures, but fortunately we didn't need to since they were very close to the cars.



It was a really nice day and a lot of fun. We look forward to going back again soon....perhaps when the snow has melted.