winter day in Estes

Saturday we packed ourselves up and headed up the mountain to spend the day in Rocky Mt. National Park and Estes. The temperature was supposed to be in the 40s so we thought it would be a good day for a winter hike. There are very few "Easy" rated hikes left that we haven't done but we managed to find one that we thought would work.














Trevor packed our lunches and we stopped for "wammy" white powdered donuts on the way.















It was really overcast when we pulled into the trailhead parking lot but you could see the sun was coming. After getting all bundled up we made our way over to the trail and saw two different families strapping on their snow shoes. I guess you could say that was when I got a little worried. Trevor asked though, and they said it was their first time in snow shoes and that they had been there last weekend and you really didn't need them until the end.



I would say we made it about 1/4 mile in about 15 minutes due to Alaire's pokyness and the wind cutting right through us. The sun was also now nowhere to be found. Trevor and I made an executive decision at that point and decided not to ruin the day just so we could say we had done a hike so we posed for pictures and made our way back to the car with some other ideas for fun.





















Ells and Alaire made their way back to the car much faster than we had started and we determined that to be because of the lunch that was promised, while they would say it was the walking sticks.














Our gourmet lunch was enjoyed in the car peering out over large field were we usually see Elk, no sightings this time though.















After lunch we made our way up to Bear Lake to try to see a frozen lake for Ellis. This was a GREAT move. As soon as we stepped onto the little trail up to the lake I could tell we were walking on at least 2 ft. of packed snow. As we approached the lake Ellis asked were it was and I told him those people out there were on it. He said, "you mean they are walking on it? CAN I DO IT TOO MOM? This is a picture of us on the middle of Bear Lake. If you scroll down in this post you can see a picture of Ellis and Alaire a couple of years ago on the shore of the same lake.

Near the middle of the lake Ellis spotted this huge collection of icicles and wanted to make his way over to check it out. Alaire didn't want anywhere near it for some reason so Trevor hung back with her and I took him up. It was really cool and he was even able to see behind them. Later he told me he thinks that is were the chipmunks we usually see in the summer go to hibernate.











Once we were up there he wanted to try to walk the normal trail that we usually walk but we were only able to make it a few hundred feet when we were really in need of snow shoes. There were a few teen boys in front of us that ran/slid down the hill back to the lake and Ellis asked if we could give it a try. He held my hand and we ran all the way down. It was sooo fun! At the bottom we sunk at least a foot into the snow. He kept saying, "this is the best day of my life. I didn't think this was going to be that fun but I was wrong mom!"









After all of the fun in the park they wanted to go walk the shops and of course pick a treat.
















Alaire picked ice cream! Trevor and I got a pound of dark chocolate covered pretzels and Ellis chose candy corn.














It was almost 2:30 when we finally got back in the car to come back down and they were worn out. Alaire was asleep as soon as we put her in her seat and Ellis had a few candy corn and then he and dad were out too!

It was a SUPER FUN DAY! I think we may have to try it again and rent snow shoes!