Just to prove we actually do work on these trips...
With our conference in Denver over, we decided to spend Friday night in the hotel instead of driving straight to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) so that we could: 1) have a good night sleep in a comfortable bed, and 2) indulge in the breakfast buffet one more time (they had smoked salmon... it was a no-brainer). We woke up Saturday morning around 6am, packed the car up and grabbed some food to go. We drove towards RMNP, and once we arrived at Estes Park, CO, we started seeing signs for "FREE PARK AND SHUTTLE". Not thinking it'd be of any use to us, we drove the last 20 minutes or so to the park entrance, where we learned that the road to the trailhead we wanted had "restricted access", meaning if we wanted to stick with that particular hike we would actually have to turn around and hitch a ride on the aforementioned useless shuttle. So, about an HOUR later we finally arrived at Glacier Gorge Trailhead, and were more than ready to start our hike to Sky Pond.
There were a lot of intersections along the way, and we passed by Alberta Falls and The Loch before arriving at the final ascent of the hike, which happened to be right next to a waterfall. Once we got to the top, The Lake of Glass came into view. We went around the left side of the lake (because everyone else was going to the right - we're such rebels, I know), and found a rock near the water to have lunch on. After lunch, we continued around the lake and over a small hill to arrive at Sky Pond. Surrounding the water were amazing mountain peaks, as well as jagged rock spears, all only about 4.5 miles from the trailhead.
On our hike back, Jordan decided it'd be a good idea to cliff jump into The Lake of Glass. I was against the idea, as it was VERY high and we hadn't seen/heard of anyone doing it before. Of course he still went ahead and did it ("gotta keep myself young", he said), while I simultaneously filmed him and had a mini heart attack. He had some spectators watching, and after he hopped out of the water, he told them that "he wouldn't have even hesitated to do something like that back in his single days"... *cue eye roll*.
If you want to hear me low-key freak out and see Jordan just smirk in response as he jumps, check out the video below:
Once he had dried off a little (and my heart rate had returned to normal), we started our descent back to the trailhead. The original plan was to do a bit more hiking that afternoon and/or the next morning since our time in the park was so limited, but Jordan's knees had been really hurting him all day (not so invincible after all eh?), so we decided to just start driving home. It was about 4:30pm when we left the park and the drive would take over 8 hours, so we thought we'd see how far we could get and then potentially camp, or just drive all the way home so we could sleep in our own bed. We ended up pushing on (and by we I clearly mean Jordan...anyone who knows me knows I can't drive in the dark) and arrived home around 2am. Another National Park checked off the list and another patch bought! (...Our souvenir of choice when visiting a National Park is a patch). There was definitely SO much more we would have liked to explore in RMNP, but nevertheless, it was another successful work-trip-turned-adventure-trip!!
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