Trail Ridge and Dream Lake

Our trip to the Rockies. We figured out that this was the seventh trip to Colorado. We have gone every few years for the last 18 years! It is definitely a favorite family vacation. We all seem to feel right at home in the mountains. We always stay at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, and we love it. I've been vacationing there since I was 10. It is so cool to be there now as an adult and watch my kids enjoying this place, these mountains, these hikes that my sisters and I used to sing along.
 
Our first day we always drive Trail Ridge Road which feels like the top of the world and it winds across the top of a ridge up in the tundra.

 
We have to bundle up when we are up there, and even still we were a little chilly. Toby was a trooper about being in the backpack, which he was in nearly every day. I think he began to feel right at home and enjoyed the time close to Daddy.

 
Dream Lake, our first hike of the trip. Not our best hike due to attitude issues, but some of that was tiredness and altitude adjustment, so the following days were much better.

 
One of Elinore's main joys was to throw rocks into the lakes. She would actually hike carrying a 1 lb rock (or sometimes more until I put a limit on it), to throw into the lake when we got there. I tried to explain to her that these were called the "Rocky Mountains" for a reason and that we would always be able to find rocks, but I don't think she believed me.

All in all she was a super hiker. Most of our hikes averaged about 4 miles and she walked them all (except for the nine mile hike). All in all she probably walked about 20 miles over the course of our trip. She had to hold someone's hand at all times while hiking otherwise she was slow as molasses! She got a patch for each hike she walked which my mom promptly stitched onto her backpack. That made her proud of herself, I think.