So the Rocky Mountain National Park trip was booked in early 2024 as part of our plans for an awesome summer. The plan was to stay at a little cabin near Drake, Colorado, and drive into the park every day for some great hiking. However, the Alexander Mountain Fire happened, and required a massive re-shuffling of plans. This is the recap of everything.
Monday, July 29th @ 9:30 P.M., CST
Didi got a text from her friend, Jean, who was headed to Colorado this week, too. It’s a link to the story about the Alexander Mountain Fire. We mutter “oh fuck” to each other and go to sleep with plans to assess the situation in the morning.
Tuesday, July 30th @ 10:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., CST
Yeah, the fire is 950 acres, as best I can tell, when I look in the morning. I reach out to the owner of our cabin rental. She advises that she’s currently in Montana and won’t be back until the weekend. I advise her of the fire and that it’s pretty close to her neck of the woods. She says she’ll understand if we cancel. I poke around a bit to get an idea of the fire’s size, containment, and expected spread. By early evening, I’m seeing reports of 3500 acres, 0% containment, and can’t find definitive data on how it’s spreading. We decide to cancel and re-book something on the west side of the the park.
Tuesday, July 30th @ 7:00 P.M., CST
Cue the internet jockeying. Hipcamp shows nothing useful for all the days we plan to be there, but if we don’t book for Saturday night, well then fuck, we can find a ton of options. We book for a “glamping” tent/campground on the southwest corner of the park in Granby. For Saturday night, we register for a hotel in Longmont, way south and east of the fires, should make this reasonably do-able. The trip is saved! Hopefully!
Wednesday, July 31st
Had a job interview, which was pretty fun. Scribbled out the packing list.
Thursday, August 1st
Took the bike rack off the car — no sense in dragging 100 pounds of dead weight across the country. And I started packing the group stuff, my stuff, and the kids’ stuff. I also got the security system installed (doorbell and a few cameras) on the house, and got ready to go.
Friday, August 2nd
Minneapolis, MN to North Platte, NE
We got on the road at 0900 and the drive took us all the way to the western part of Nebraska. We probably could have blown through the whole trip, with the great time we made, but we would have been arriving early, so we stayed in a hotel in North Platte. I finished reading Derek Sivers‘ How to Live not long after we called it a night.
Saturday, August 3rd
North Platte, NE to RMNP-area, Colorado
Up early, we let the kids go crazy in the hotel pool, and then we got our ass in gear, headed for Colorado — the last three-ish hours of the drive. We had time to kill before we could check in at our next hotel, so we had lunch, took care of a few things, and then went into the park.
We hit the Alluvial Fan area and went up to the Alpine Station so the kids could hit the gift shop. After we finished in the park, we stopped in Estes Park for dinner, and then got our butts to the hotel we had to stay in this evening. A little bit of drama with the room situation not matching what was booked, but it all worked out in the end.
Sunday, August 4th
We checked out of the hotel, had a breakfast at Waffle House, and got down to business.
The Gem Lake trail was our target for the day. Didi and I had done it before, and the kids were getting a trial-by-fire for this one. It was a good haul up, and Eddy handled it far better than I thought he would. On the way down, I did get a glimpse of a black bear in the brush about 40-50 yards upslope of us — shocking, because there aren’t supposed to be bears in that area.
After we finished our descent, we went and checked-in at the glamping campground in Granby, made some dehydrated camp food for dinner, and then racked out for the night. I started reading Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs for the umpteenth time.
We got hit by some great thunderstorms that first night in the tent, which was awesome. Good display of lightning and thunder and some brief downpours. We didn’t get any moisture into the tent, which was pleasant.
Monday, August 5th
We got up early to 49ºF temps, and we got our butts to the park and we started our day with the Lulu City hike, based on a recommendation from Sam’s therapist. It was tougher than Gem Lake, and Eddy didn’t do as well on this one. He did have a hissyfit toward the turnaround point at Lulu City, started kicking rocks, and managed to drill Sam with one. I lost my shit with him big-time and days later, I still feel pretty bad about it. He was better on the return trip to the car, thankfully. Additionally, Sam had a Code Brown on the trail and had to hang his ass out over a fallen log and take care of business. We had planned on a trio of hikes for the day, but we were fucking beat. We opted to head into Grand Lake and snag lunch at a barbecue joint, before we went over to Adams Falls.
We waited out the brief rainstorm that passed through before hiking Adams Falls, then headed back to the campsite. We hit up a grocery store on the way for s’mores ingredients, and then got our butts back to the camp. I took the kids over to the playground to give Didi a break, we made some s’mores, and then we packed up the car and got ready for our departure the next day.
Tuesday, August 6th
Granby, CO to Council Bluffs, IA
We decamped at 6:30 a.m. local time, and headed for the park (the shortest route was through and not around), with a brief stop on the way to snag some morning caffeine at the gas station. This was about the same time we heard that Walz would be Harris’s running mate for the 2024 election, and we were both excited and sad that he wouldn’t be our governor anymore. A good chunk of the day was spent swapping memes, quoting to each other from social media, laughing, and being excited about their prospects in the election.1
We took our time driving through the park on the way out, and hit a few of the scenic overlooks that we’d previously bypassed.
Once we were through, we stopped at a few stores in Estes Park, and did some light shopping. Didi was able to indulge her long-standing vacation tradition and got some Halloween decorations, and I got myself a piece of Pallasite meteorite as a way to remember the trip. The boys stacked rocks along a river. I also off-loaded a bunch of our leftover trail mix with the crows and magpies that were hanging around the parking lot.
We had thought about eating in town, but opted to get on the road. We got underway at about noon and drove all the way to Council Bluffs, Iowa. We were pretty cooked, and once the kids were asleep, Didi and I took a soak in the hot tub for about half an hour. We were so tired that didn’t even realize how shitty our hotel was until we woke up and started getting ready the next day.
Wednesday, August 7th
Council Bluffs, IA to Minneapolis, MN
Given that we only had a few hundred miles to go, we weren’t scrambling when we got up. I got Eddy and Sam down to the pool so that they could burn off a bunch of energy before we hit the road. We ate some food at the continental breakfast, dropped some gas in the car, hit Target for snacks and a few other things, and then headed for home.
The drive back was largely uneventful. Didi and I swapped several times as we were both pretty exhausted by the time we rolled in to the house around 2:00 p.m. We offloaded some gear, the kids immediately got onto the fast internet and disappeared until their mom showed up to pick them up a few hours later.
Wrap-Up and Lessons Learned
- Podcasts are better than music for keeping one’s alertness going.
- We weren’t ready — as a group — to do a six-day vacation with no/minimal breaks from each other. While the Indianapolis trip was smooth, it was only two days. We needed to be able to take breaks from one another and we just didn’t get that on this trip. The next time we do one of these, we’ll work up toward it.
- The Falcon Guide to Hiking Rocky Mountain National Park doesn’t do a good job of rating the difficulty of hikes. Hikes it called “moderately easy” were most assuredly not. Comparing and looking at AllTrails.com indicated they were “Moderate” difficulty, which might have played into some differences in planning. The lesson here: subscribe to AllTrails.