Our RMNP Timed-Entry permit was between 9-11am, so we made sure to be at the entrance by 9, which was only about 2 miles from the Gateway. Our drive into the park on Trail Ridge Road gave us a very up close look at the damage from the wildfires.

After a few stops, we continued up, up, up Trail Ridge Road to the Alpine Visitor Center. The visitor center is the highest in the National Park system, at 11,796 feet. We took the short paved trail up to an elevation of 12,005 feet.

After a long stop at the gift shop, we continued east to Alluvial Fan. This area was created in 1982 when a dam gave way and let loose 200 million gallons of water and giant boulders. I had read about this area before we left, and knew the kids would have a blast climbing on the boulders. It was so cool!

Our next stop was at Stanley Park, just outside RMNP. Ellie and I got on our bikes and tested out the sweet mountain bike skills area.

We got to our Airbnb in Estes Park and headed out to dinner at Antonio’s, where we ordered way too much delicious pizza.

Our only plan for Monday was driving 1.5 hours to Grand Lake, CO. We were not in a hurry to get going, so I took the kids down to the pool for a quick swim before checkout. The outdoor hot tub was as nice as described to me the night before, even without the gorgeous sunset.

After checkout, we stopped at a playground in Silverthorne, picked up some sandwiches and drove down to the North Ten Mile Creek trail in Frisco. We hiked a little ways up the trail and found a nice boulder to have lunch.

We enjoyed hiking along the creek and made several stops to climb on rocks and search for “gold”(pyrite).

We reached a meadow after about a mile and a half of hiking and 418’ of elevation gain. Tyler did most of the hiking on my back.

Once we got back to the van, we stopped at the Kum & Go for some slushees and ice cream to cool off. Then it was off to Grand Lake. We checked into the Gateway Inn and the very helpful and talkative front desk worker suggested a place to eat in downtown Grand Lake called Sagebrush BBQ. There were a couple other restaurants we scoped out online that we wanted to go to, but it turns out that Monday in Grand Lake is a popular day for all the restaurants to be closed. Grand Lake got hit with a double whammy with Covid and also the devastating East Troublesome wildfire in October 2020. It was unreal walking downtown and seeing the fire destruction in the nearby mountains. Anyway, everyone else in town had heard that they should eat at Sagebrush, so we didn’t even attempt to eat there. We ended up at a restaurant that was very short-staffed and had a mediocre at best meal. We headed back to the Gateway for snacks for the still-hungry kids and some card games before retiring for the night on some very uncomfortable beds. We probably won’t be back to Grand Lake anytime soon.

Sunday morning we headed up to Vail Pass to bike down the paved trail to Copper Mountain. Even though the trail was in between two highways, it felt secluded and was a lot of fun.

Once we arrived at Copper, we met up with the Yehl’s who were already enjoying all the activities. We had lunch with a view of what remained of last winter’s halfpipe.

After lunch we took the go karts and bumper boats for a spin. Ellie did the zip line and climbing wall, both kids did the quad-jumper and WreckTangle, and we all took a couple trips down the Alpine Coaster. We sadly said good-bye to Cassie and the kids as they headed for home to get ready for the week.

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I dropped Jackie and the kids off at the hotel, and Matt and I went mountain biking. We did 8 miles of the Soda Creek trail, located between Lake Dillon and Keystone. Afterwards, we stopped at the local Irish pub for some beers, food and ski talk. Not much has changed since those days many years ago in our college dorm room. Except now we can drink Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA instead of the cheapest liquor we could get our hands on and eat fish and chips instead of ramen. Great times!

Meanwhile back at the hotel, Jackie and the kids were enjoying a beautiful sunset from the outdoor hot tub!

And that concluded one hell of an epic Father’s Day!