Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes

Hello friends and family! We are getting a bit behind in our blog updates, so we're going to try to catch up over this next week as we finally have internet connectivity again! Let's start with our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). We headed up to Estes Park on Wednesday, which is right outside of RMNP, and met up with one of my best friends Lauren and her boyfriend Michael.

After a lot of asking around and driving around, we found free camping on Roosevelt National Forest Land. Let me go on a little rant and say that we LOVE our National Forests! Did you know that you can camp for free on most National Forest and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land? We are proud to say that we have not paid to camp up to this point on our trip. We haven't paid for any accommodations actually. God bless America. Persistence and a little internet research are key, and it helps if you are able to find some rugged looking local folks who can point you in the right direction. We would be happy to be those folks in the future for any of you looking for free (legal) campsites.

Michael (also a Wisconsinite--whoop whoop!) is a fly fishing guide for a company based in Estes Park which also happens to be the only guide operation that is allowed to fish in RMNP. Lucky for us, that meant we were able to fish at beautiful Sprague Lake in the park. Neither of us had ever been fly fishing and I wasn't expecting to catch an actual fish my first time trying it out. Honestly, I didn't even know that you could fly fish on lakes. Although the water was FREEZING and it was a pretty windy day, we had a ton of fun learning how to cast, set the hook, and bring in the monster fish. And get this--I caught a fish!! It was a super tiny little fish, but a fish nonetheless! I won't mention Dave's luck (or lack thereof) in this regard. We'll definitely try out fly fishing again in the future and go for the monster.

For the rest of the time hanging with Lauren and Michael, we had some excellent barbeque, drank some local beer on the rooftop deck at a brewery, and, most importantly, played Euchre! For those of you who don't know, one of our favorite past times is playing cards, especially games from our beloved Wisconsin. It was an unexpected surprise that we were able to play Euchre with fellow Wisconsinites while in Colorado. Not that anyone is keeping track, but Michael and I won. Lauren and Michael had to head out early Friday morning to their respective jobs, so Dave and I, jobless as we are, spent the next couple of days checking RMNP. We both are pretty dorky and love watching those videos they put together on the history of the parks, as seen at the visitor centers. We also went for a day hike to Albert Falls and a few lakes new Bear Lake.

We drove up Trail Ridge Road until we had to turn around because I got altitude sickness (lame, I know). Nausea aside, I would highly recommend the drive!

We headed back to our temporary home in Louisville on Saturday afternoon where we were on dog and house-sitting duty for the week while the Vanberg clan was in WI and MN. This was our last week in Colorado, which we could hardly believe!

I'll leave you with a quote that we recently saw framed on the wall of a cafe in Denver. Both Dave and I took a photo of the quote because we liked it so much, which we found out just today as we uploaded photos onto our computer and saw it photographed twice! We both connect with these words in the midst of this precious yet uncertain adventure we are on.

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it's worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.” -Miranda July