TRAVEL

Falling in Love With Nature in Rocky Mountain National Park

A wilderness of beauty everywhere you look

One of the perks of traveling is being able to sort through photos and relive the experience again.

Sure, it’s never the same as being there in the moment.

But right now I’m aching for the mountains, so getting to reminisce about our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado brings back great memories.

The wildlife, landscape, and exploring a beautiful creek complete with mini waterfalls all come to mind.

Why Rocky Mountain National Park?

My husband and I had our 2 and 4-year-old at the time and were ready for an adventure out west.

We chose Colorado because of the several destinations there. Not only for Rocky Mountain National Park and its scenic drives, but also to see Pike’s Peak, Garden of the Gods, and Seven Falls.

On the same trip, we stayed in magical Estes Park where the elk really put on a show, and I also wrote about our adventure lounging in a natural hot spring right along the river.

Yes, the trip was packed.

But when you have small kids, there’s never a lot of relaxing on vacation. Might as well see all you can when you can’t do much lounging anyway.

Or at least that’s our motto.

The wildlife at Rocky Mountain National Park

On day 1 driving into the park, we saw our very first animal. It was the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

There was a nice group of them off to the side of the road as we drove around a curve.

Multiple cars were parked and getting out to get a closer look and take pictures.

So of course we stopped too.

You can see that one sheep has a collar around its’ neck for tracking purposes. It seems to be a common thing we’ve seen in some of the national parks we’ve visited.

They really weren’t too skittish. They stayed in their little group, and my 4-year-old son had fun picking up the rocks as we took a break out of the car.

Later on in the day we also saw a marmot.

My husband was lucky and got a good shot of it.

Typically they are hard to catch in a photo. They can be so fast running away and burying themselves in their underground homes.

This was probably the least interesting animal to me. Only because where we live we have groundhogs that look a lot like marmots but are a little bigger.

My favorite and perhaps the most beautiful animal we saw in the park was the elk.

I would say they are the next best thing to see outside the moose (which unfortunately we never did spot).

They are so grand with their impressive antlers and size.

There is no way I would want to get too close to them. The zoom on my husband’s camera lens though really gave us a good close-up of what they look like.

The landscape at Rocky Mountain National Park

I couldn’t get over all the natural beauty in the park.

When we went on our trip it was during the beginning of fall. Various parts of Colorado were more yellow in color with the aspen trees turning.

Rounding one of the corners while driving through the park, I snapped this shot from inside the Jeep.

I felt like I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

There was a beautiful mountain to look at practically in every possible direction.

Here is a picture of me holding my daughter below and taking a moment to take in the view near the Alpine Visitor Center.

I never got tired of looking at the mountains. I fell in love with Colorado visiting Rocky Mountain National Park.

Fun in the creek at Rocky Mountain National Park

One of the most fun and memorable moments with my kids was taking some time to enjoy one of the creeks in the park.

I’ll never forget it.

We had the option to pull off and do a small hike or keep on going. Last minute we decided to park and stretch our legs.

And I’m so glad we did.

What kid (or adult) doesn’t enjoy taking some time to either play or relax by running water?

We ended up spending a couple of hours finding differently shaped rocks and climbing up bigger boulders to sit and check out the view.

Walking a little further we spotted what I would call, mini-waterfalls.

You can see them in the picture below.

The sound of the water rushing down over the rocks was so relaxing, and there was hardly anyone else around.

We took our time exploring, and that last-minute decision to stop was probably my favorite moment of taking time as a family in the park.

The only downfall was my son got a splinter on one of the wooden bridges when we were trying to get a picture.

For a 4-year-old he dealt with it like a champ. The splinter stayed in most of the day (since I didn’t have any tweezers), and he barely cried at all.

He’s tougher than I was at that age.

Rocky Mountain National Park is a beautiful place to visit.

Even with our two small kids, we felt like there were several places to get out and take in the views. Or if they fell asleep, we had plenty to look at on the drive as well.

Going through these photos brings back a flood of good memories.

If you can’t travel, I highly recommend reminiscing about the trips you’ve already taken.

It fills my soul to look at these photos on this December day.

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