Rocky Mountain 101 for First-Time Visitors!

Welcome to Rocky Mountain National Park. Today we're going to share with you 10 things to know about Rocky Mountain in 10 minutes. We're Matt and Cheryl and we are both teachers. Matt used to teach at the local university and I taught special ed for 28 years. Welcome to Rocky Mountain 101. Okay, let's start class here. The first thing to know about Rocky Mountain is that it is a very popular park. It's usually in the top five in most visited national parks in the country. It has reached over 5 million visitors a year. I think this last year it was over 4 million visitors. And it's just an hour away from Denver which we think is one of the reasons why it is most popular. And it is so popular they have actually instituted a timed entry system. Now every year it changes a little bit so I'm not gonna get too into the weeds on it but for the last couple of years you need a reservation between the hours of 9 and 2 to enter the main areas of the park. And in the Bear Lake Corridor, which is one of the areas of the park that is really special and cool, that one is 5 a.m to 6 p.m as of 2024. And those reservations go pretty quick. You can reserve them months in advance and then they always save, I'd say about a thousand for the night before. And last night we actually tried to get a night before reservation and we saw a thousand timed entry reservations disappear before our eyes in two minutes. It was crazy. Yep, be on this early, get those reservations. Okay, next up is the mountains. Rocky Mountain National Park is set aside of course because of its mountains. Surprisingly though they are not the tallest mountains in Colorado. Colorado has several mountain peaks that are over 14,000 feet in elevation. These are called 14ers. Rocky Mountain only has one of them. You might kind of wonder, well why is this set aside as a national park when they're not the tallest? Probably a couple reasons, partly political. The people of Estes Park wanted it set aside as a national park. But also I actually think the area is really among the most beautiful in the entire state of Colorado. It's not necessarily just up on the peaks, it's as you hike around. Really, really lush. As you can see like all these trees and really beautiful areas. A couple things that come along with this really high elevation is altitude sickness. Yesterday we were up hiking up past the Trail Ridge Road, very, very high about 12,000 feet and I started feeling a pain in my shoulder and I learned that there is 40% less air up there and altitude sickness is really common and it doesn't even matter how physically fit you are. I've been training for a half marathon and it affected me more than Matt. So altitude sickness is legit. Another thing to know about with this high elevation is these mountain storms that come in. First time we came to Rocky Mountain we were here over the 4th of July and it was beautiful sunny down in the valley in Estes Park and as we drove up the Trail Ridge Road we got pelted with hail just in the middle of the day and then we drove down all sunshine again. It was crazy but very common. Interesting, about a third of the park is above the tree line. One of the really cool things about Rocky Mountain. In fact, that gets us to our next thing which is so cool about it is the tundra. So when you get really high up above the tree line you are in the tundra. This tundra, just the grass is so short. There's only about a 45 day growing season up there so stuff can't grow for very long. Winds of up to 150 miles per hour. But one of my very favorite things to do is when we get on the tundra is I like to just look at the ground because you can see these little tiny tender flowers. They're only out in July and August but there are so many colors purples and pinks and reds and yellows. It's just wonderful. And another cool thing that you see up there is these fat marmots. They're crawling around the tundra all the time and we learned this last year from our friends in Switzerland who cover Switzerland like we cover the American West that marmots are called a group of marmots is called the madness of marmots. That's kind of interesting. And something else interesting about marmots just for fun they can sleep eight months of the year. They hibernate for that long. They just fatten up and then they sleep. I think if I ever get reincarnated as an animal that's what I want to be. Okay next one about Rocky Mountain though is the lakes. Rocky Mountain is home to 150 mountain lakes. They are absolutely beautiful, very cool but you don't swim in them. At these lakes there are three main factors that keep visitors out. Number one these lakes are wicked cold like freezing cold all year round filled with jagged rocks okay not not easy on the toes and the last one also full of leeches. You can swim most of the lakes but most people don't. No. So the where the places to swim are outside of the park in Esses Park or Grand Lake which is behind us here we'll cover those a little bit more in a minute but that's that's where you want to swim. And little hot tip if you are going to be in Grand Lake and Esses Park do your swimming in Grand Lake it's much nicer. Okay let's talk about hiking next. So Rocky Mountain is really quite a hiker's park. There are so many trails. I think we looked it up there's over 350 miles of trails in Rocky Mountain National Park and it really is just a hiker's paradise. Yes yesterday we were in the Bear Lake Corridor and what was so great about that is there are just it's like there's just a gazillion choose your own adventure hiking. There's all these like little spur trails they intersect they've got shuttles so you could get off at the park and ride or you can ride the park and ride up to a stop and hike back to the park and ride or catch a shuttle back to the park and ride. There are just endless possibilities. And the other cool thing is there's trails for every level of hiker. So I was in Mount Rainier earlier this summer and it felt like all the trails were difficult uphill trails and they got a little old after a while actually. Rocky Mountain you'll you'll find trails for every level so there's a lot of easy trails that just go around the lakes that are super super easy and doable for anybody that are flat and then you've got your backpacking trails of course and then you got everything in between so that's pretty cool about Rocky. We love Rocky Mountain so much that we have a whole playlist about visiting Rocky Mountain. We also have a website we'reintherockies.com that has several articles on it and it also includes a freebie that covers the next thing that Matt's going to talk about. Yeah now scenic drives that's the next topic. So Rocky Mountain is famous I would say for the hikes and for the drives. The most famous drive in the park is the Trail Ridge Road. This is a 48 mile road that connects Estes Park to Grand Lake and what's so great about it is that it gets up high on the mountain above the tree line up with the tundra and then you're driving for like eight miles along the ridge just with these drop-off views on both sides it's insane. The Trail Ridge actually replaced the old Fall River Road but both roads are still in operation and they both kind of offer their own little area of fun. You know like Matt said the Trail Ridge you are just looking over these amazing views on the ridge. So there's a couple of famous scenic drives for you. When I think about Rocky I think about the hikes and the scenic drives. And our next topic which is the wildlife. So Rocky Mountain National Park is famous for the elk. There are so many elk in the park and in the surrounding towns especially Estes Park. We are here in September right now this is the time to come if you want to see elk. They've been fantastic and you hear them bugling. Oh the bugling is like for a while I'm like what is that sound but it was elk bugling and something so cool about seeing the elk is you know Moraine Park is real popular for seeing them but in the town of Estes at the golf course was some of the best elk watching we had this trip. There were like 30 of them just hanging out on the golf course and you could see them hear them it was so fun. We were sitting on the river eating our breakfast and one just walked up right behind me didn't even see it coming and across the river it was incredible. Yes other animals here are moose. Now we we've seen the moose here before. Yeah they're more common on the west side the elk kind of hang out on the east the moose on the west. You know one thing that we've seen a lot of on this trip were blue jays. There's a lot of different species of birds here but we have really enjoyed watching the blue jays on this trip. Yeah if you're a birder and I've seen some really amazing hawks in the park before as well and so if you're if you're a birder definitely keep an eye out there. I saw an osprey today when I was out kayaking. Yeah it was great. Yeah it's really cool that way. Bears. You might be wondering whether there's bears in the park. There's no grizzly bears in Colorado. There are black bears in Rocky Mountain National Park but not that many. Maybe 15 to 30 of them. It's very unlikely you'll see a bear. But it's not enough to where like you go to Yellowstone Glacier they will tell you hey be bear aware like that's something you hear all the time in those parks. Rocky Mountain they don't even really mention them. No. So it's not I because we get asked questions all the time is it safe and I would say if the national park isn't like warning you around every corner you don't need to worry so much about a bear. Next up is the gateway towns. You know there's the east side that has Estes Park and on the west side of the park there is Grand Lake. Both of them are absolutely wonderful but they are pretty different from each other. Now for Estes Park most people drive right through that. It's the natural way to come in through Denver and from a lot of other places. It's way busier way busier than Grand Lake. They have the wonderful Elkhorn Avenue where you can do some shopping. There's like family fun centers. There's Fun City. There's cool movie theaters, horseback rides, the Stanley Hotel and some amazing things to eat. We love to eat at Antonio's Pizza. They have like this giant 26 inch pizza. We love to get the taffy in the stores. We love to watch the taffy machine. But the other gateway town to Rocky Mountain National Park is Grand Lake. Now the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park doesn't have as many attractions and hikes that you would do but Grand Lake is actually kind of the focal point over here. Grand Lake itself it's pretty cool. It's a charming town but it's western. Everything is here is a log cabin and it's really really nice. It is a very like nice resort town. There's some hikes that you can do. So some waterfalls. You can get out on the lake with kayaking and Sherwin went for a kayak ride today. Or rent a pontoon. Rent a boat and get out on the lake. You can do boat tours on the lake. This is actually Colorado's largest natural lake. Next is when to visit and how long to visit. So we think that the best time to visit Rocky Mountain is I would not come here until the very beginning of July. Because winter starts late in Colorado. Some of their snowiest months are in the spring and then it takes a long time to plow the Trail Ridge Road and the Old Fall River Road. A lot of times they don't open the Old Fall River Road until July 4th. And so you want to make sure that when you visit this park that things are going strong. And then we're here at the end of September and there are quite a few things that are seasonally shut down already or maybe only open on the weekend. So I wouldn't visit too much later than we're visiting. Like after October I think you're really getting into a sketch time. Yeah July and August are summer and they're great and you got wildflowers and all that. September fall also great. The colors. I mean look at these colors. These trees are insane. And then you got the elk on the rut which has been super super special. And then as far as how long to visit. This is an interesting question. You can do Rocky Mountain in about a day or two if you're kind of skimming it. If you give it three to four days that's going to allow you more time to kind of do it properly as we always say. And to check out some of the things in these gateway towns and get a little variety and recreation into your visit. And if you want to know more about Rocky Mountain National Park check out our video Mistakes of Rocky Mountain National Park or our trip planner that goes through all the nuts and bolts of planning your trip. Thanks for watching.