On the Road Again
The day started off with a 7 am wake up call. After the 3:30 am wake up call the previous morning, it was a lot more reasonable. Everyone was lazy to get up, but soon we were all wanting breakfast. As Ben and Reed had oatmeal and peanut butter, I tried one of my freeze dried biscuits and gravy meals. Honestly, it wasn’t the best but it got the job done. Soon after we went down, washed dishes, and then packed up our campsite.
A few days earlier, we had heard of a good short hiking trail that would give us a 360 degree view of Estes Park. After packing up, we set out to find the trail head. A short 30 second drive from our campsite we parked the car and headed up to the trail head — a 1/4 of a mile and we were there. As we read the trail head, we read the trail leading up to Kruger’s Rock (a very underrated trail). With that, we began our hike up to the top. As we climbed, up we past very few people. A short bit into the hike and we found a rock that was jutted out overlooking the city. We walked out unto the section of rock and were amazed with what we saw. A beautiful view of the city of Estes Park, Colorado. We thought this was the view the person was talking about, (which it wasn’t), and kept trekking towards the top. As we would get higher the view kept getting better through the trees. We got to what we thought was the top and realized we had to scramble up some more rocks to the top. Once we scrambled to the top, we were amazed with a breath taking view of Estes Park and a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. We stopped and took many pictures as we were the only people up there. About 10 to 15 minutes later, we started our trek downwards. We soon ran into a group of people walking up, one gentleman had a St. Louis Cardinals hat on. We stopped and had a quick chat with the group about the Cardinals and St. Louis. He was from STL but had moved a couple of years prior. After our quick talk we continued downward. At the end of the hike it was a total of around 4 and a half miles. Then it was time to head to Boulder.
Ben and Sam checking out the details of our hike for the day.
Reed standing atop Kruger Rock with a view of Estes Park behind.
We began the hour journey from Estes Park, CO to Boulder, CO. With Ben driving and myself as the direction giver we set out down the mountains. The drive was beautiful and uneventful, (thank goodness), through Lyons and a couple of other smaller towns. Once we were in the town of Boulder, we meet Reed’s aunt at her house. Aunt Alice wanted to take us out to dinner on Pearl St. We told her not to pick a nice restaurant because we hadn’t showered in 4 days. We went to Elon Musk’s brothers restaurant called The Kitchen. We talked about the next day to come, hiking the two 14 thousand foot mountains called Grey’s and Torrey’s. After we ordered, Aunt Alice told us to go explore Pearl St Mall. We walked down and explored the Mall, and came back to enjoy our dinner. We all had the roasted chicken (highly recommend, its amazing) and a salted chocolate chip cookie for dessert. After dinner Aunt Alice gave us a short drive around the city. She showed us a little bit of University of Colorado — Boulder and also Chautauqua Park. At Chautauqua Park, we got a beautiful view of the Flat Irons of Boulder. Soon we were on our way to our campsite for the night.
Once we got to our campsite, we realized that it closed and we could not camp there. With some quick finding we found a Walmart not more than 20 minutes parking lot that we could sleep in. With seeing great reviews on All Stays website, we were comfortable with the choice. As we pulled into the Evergreen, CO Walmart at 10 pm, we knew it would be a quick 5 hours of sleep to be up at 3:30 to hike the two 14ers. As I laid my head down to sleep, I could only think of one thing: No regrets!
A view of the sunset over Boulder, Colorado, from a Flat Irons viewing point above Chautauqua.