We started our visit to Rocky Mountains National Park at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Centre where the kids collected their Junior Rangers Activity Books.The Junior Rangers Program operates at all of the National Parks and by completing the activities, kids take away a little bit of extra knowledge from each visit.
The 'reward' for completing the activities is usually a badge and sometimes a patch and though it's usually for ages 5 and up (with the number of activities to complete dependent on the age) most rangers have been pretty cool about including Dash in the 'reward' when he's done his best to complete the activities in his book (particularly the drawing and colouring in)!So we set off in Bessie along the Trail Ridge Road, the highest major highway in North America. And as it happens, so did about fifty thousand other people.
The road is so busy that at the Alpine Visitor Centre, close to the highest point on the road, the already large parking lot had cars double parked and waiting for a spot.The boys played with some other kids chopping away at and making snowballs from a large remnant of an ice hill outside the visitor centre.
I took a walk along the Tundra Communities Trail and the Alpine Ridge Trail, both very short walks, but at 12,000 feet, I felt like that was enough.
We were lucky enough to see a couple of bull elk not far from a herd of their female companions.
After Dash and Indy completed their Junior Ranger activities, we descended west, encountering a moose in the Colorado River Valley.
At the Kawuneeche Visitor Center, the kids were appointed as Junior Rangers (and made their pledges to protect the park).
We found a fantastic campsite at Stillwater Campground, overlooking Lake Granby.
