Thursday, June 25, 2015

Horseback Riding In Rocky Mountain National Park

So before I begin the story of what happened on Monday (6/8), I have to tell a story of what happened the night before.  We were staying in really neat cabins on the Colorado River in Grand Lake.  We got to our cabin fairly late on Sunday night and by the time we got settled in it was around 11:00 before we went to bed.  About 5 minutes after we turned off the lights I heard Matt sit up straight in bed.  He said "I think there is a bat in here."  Sure enough, we turned on the lights and there was a bat flying around our room.  We quickly ran out of our room and slammed the door behind us thinking we could keep the bat in there and sleep out with the kids in the living room.  But guess what?  There was a bat out there too!!!  AHHHHHH!!!  I quickly started googling how to get a bat out of the while Matt grabbed a broom and tried to shoo the bat out the door.  We were starting to panic but thankfully the bats went back into the ceiling with the lights on.  Needless to say we slept with the lights on that night and quickly changed cabins first thing in the morning.  Every vacation needs a good bat story!  

After our long night with bats we had to wake up early to go on a breakfast horseback trail ride through the Continental Divide and Rocky Mountain National Park!  How awesome!!!  
This was the activity that Kate was most looking forward to on the whole trip.  She couldn't wait to ride a horse.  This was her horse named Nugget.  He was the perfect little horse for her.
 Ben's horse was named Sherlock and he was a big horse for such a little boy but Ben did an amazing job riding him.
 And this is Raquel Matt's horse.  There is no picture of my crazy horse named Buzz.  There is always one horse that won't cooperate and I got the short straw this time!


 It was a fun 2 hours of riding up and down hills and through the woods.  The scenery was just gorgeous and seeing it from horseback was awesome!


 Loved seeing the snow covered mountains as we rode through the meadow.

 After the ride, we enjoyed a yummy cowboy breakfast with the best pancakes we have ever eaten!!
 After the horseback fun we headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We started with a hike to the source of the Colorado River.


 We were excited to see an elk with a full rack on it on the side of the road.
 We decided to take a drive up through the park into the arctic area of the park.  It was a long crazy road but the views were amazing.
 And there was tons of snow!!!  The kids loved getting to play in it.  Here they are standing on a picnic table covered in snow.
 The arctic lake was still frozen over which is crazy for almost mid June.
 The road we were on is covered with 35 feet of snow during the winter.  Here are my people standing with all the snow drifts.  Insane!!!
 The kids finished up their Junior Ranger books for Rocky Mountain and got official ranger badges!  3 parks and 3 Junior Ranger programs completed.

 We took one final hike up to a beautiful cascading falls.




 We headed back to our new, bat-free cabin for the evening to eat dinner and have a campfire by the Colorado River.  We even roasted some marshmallows and enjoyed s'mores.

 We challenged the kids to a game of tag and had so much fun running around all being kids together.  It was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me.  Loved getting to just cut loose with my kids and have fun!!

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