We spent two days at Rocky Mountain National Park - an absolutely magnificent park with mountains, meadows, alpine tundra, green-blue lakes, and a bit of glacial activity.
We drove up Trail Ridge Road, which snakes high into the mountains. We also took a 4.4-mile hike up to Flattop Mountain. While I'm totally capable of walking 4.4 miles - maybe even hopping 4.4 miles on one foot across Chicago - hiking UP a mountain is terrible. It was hard to breath, every step was a challenge, and seriously I could not breathe. Argh!
Once we made it up the mountain and into the cloud which covered the mountaintop I was a happy camper. I almost skipped the whole 4.4 miles down!
Best part of the hardest hike ever? Seeing alpine tundra and its awesome animals!
We saw tons of lichen-covered rocks, odd grasses and beautiful flowers. And, more importantly, we saw pikas and marmots!
Pikas are adorable rabbit-relatives who love the tundra. They eat tundra grass and organize it in little piles to dry it for eating later. Pikas don't hibernate and according to Wiki these little darlings are seriously threatened by global warming!
We also saw chubby marmots - those guys look like beavers, sort of. They bumble around and
tumble over rocks.
Besides the mountains, we enjoyed a nature path, a ranger-guided tour of an old ranch and all the splendor the Department of the Interior has to offer. Whoo-hoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment