Minneapolis, MN >> Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

After a friend's wedding on the 8th, we still hadn't booked our first place to stay and hadn't finished putting everything in our storage unit (or hiding some of our things in the Johnson household), so we decided to leave later that week.

We ended up leaving at noon on Thursday the 13th and headed toward Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove about 9 hours Friday to North Platte, Nebraska. On Friday, we woke up early and hit the road to RMNP (about 4 more hours). We arrived at 10am, bought our America the Beautiful Pass (a year long national park pass) at the entrance, and headed in!

Pictures from RMNP

After stopping at a scenic overlook, we decided to drive along Trail Ridge Road based on recommendations we received! The views were breathtaking (and not just from the altitude changes).

We then did the Bierstadt Lake Loop Trail- the elevation change seemed to hit Ryan a bit during this hike! We also did the Irene Lake Trail! Both of these were less buys than the popular trails around Bear Lake. We did go up to those trail and do the quick in and out to see Bear Lake and Nymph lake - it was crazy how busy those trails were, we were happy we didn't spend the day on those trails!

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Also, Ryan swears he saw an elk in here and this is the picture he got..

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