Watch Before Visiting Rocky Mountain National Park | Trip Planner!

Planning a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and not sure where to start? Grab your notebook and pencil because today we are going to cover the top five questions people have when they visit Rocky Mountain National Park. When to go, the best things to do, where to stay, how to get around, and even some awesome spots to eat. We'll also go over the general layout of the park, updates for travel this year, and our favorite ways to extend your trip and see some other great things in Colorado. We're Matt and Cheryl and we write travel guides and we live in Utah and we love to visit our neighbor Rocky Mountain National Park. I am super excited to talk about Rocky Mountain National Park because it is so pretty and I've got the brochure here but before we dive into all the fun things to do, I want to go over the map overview for you. So Rocky Mountain is divided into east and west basically. Since the mountain range runs north and south, there are things on the east side to do and there are things on the west side of the park to do. In order to get from one side to the other, you need to cross over the mountain range. Most of the sections and the action of the park is on the east side. That's where you'll find the Bear Lake Corridor with beautiful Bear Lake. It's also where you'll find Fall River Road, a wonderful drive that goes up to the top of the pass. And there are several lakes and hikes on the east side for you to explore. There's also more people on the east side and so if you want to avoid people, you go over to the west side. There's maybe not quite as many lakes and big time attractions but it's really really pretty and there's probably a little bit more wildlife on that side. There are four main entrances to go to Rocky Mountain National Park and on the east side by Estes Park is the Fall River entrance and the Beaver Meadows entrance. On the southeast corner is the Wild Basin which is another area that's not super popular and then on the west side is the Kalanichi entrance and that's the one you would go to if you're coming from Grand Lake. It's really kind of three main entrances. Each of those have a visitor center next to them as you enter the park. There's also another visitor center up at the very top of the divide so as you cross over the mountain pass, there's the Alpine Visitor Center there. It's the highest visitor center in the National Park Service and it sits at over 12,000 feet up on the Trail Ridge Road which we'll talk about a little later and that has incredible views of the valley while you're at the visitor center there and actually some really interesting displays. I have never heard of an animal hibernating this long. These marmots hibernate seven or eight months a year so you only have a couple months to just gorge and fatten up and then they sleep. The other thing to know is just that to get from Estes Park to Grand Lake like via the Trail Ridge Road, it's about a two-hour drive. It's only 45 miles or 48 miles. I'm looking at my notes but it will take you two hours and that's like without stopping. It's kind of a long trip and so a lot of times people will want to visit like Estes Park and then they'll maybe stay over in Grand Lake another day if they're spending a longer trip in the park. That's if you visit in the summer when the road is plowed. If you end up visiting during a time when the pass is closed because it's such high elevation, it has snow, it's not open year-round, then you have to drive all the way around the park to get over to Grand Lake. You can still visit the park but you're not going to be able to drive over that road if you're visiting in the off-season. And then finally Rocky Mountain National Park is about an hour and a half away from Denver. The main crossroads of the west all the major airlines will fly into Denver and then it's about an hour and a half drive to get there. Next up is what makes Rocky Mountain special. The first thing is one of the obvious things are the peaks. Rocky Mountain is famous for its amazing mountain peaks and when you visit Rocky Mountain National Park you're going to be seeing peaks that are like 12,000 feet to 14,000 feet and so you are at super high altitude and it it really is a neat experience. Like we're from Utah and so we deal with a lot of high altitude too but it's different. It's even higher there and it's very cool. I have a little brochure here. There's different ecosystems in the park. So the first one is the montane ecosystem which is down in the valleys. The valleys are so beautiful in Rocky Mountain. They're green, they're wide, they're just great. They call them parks. They're kind of an old french fur trapper term and then you get up into what they call the sub-alpine ecosystem which is where there's a lot of dense forests, beautiful scenery in the sub-alpine region and then you get up into what they call the alpine region. We call it the tundra area. That's where there's tundra located because you're up above the tree line basically in the alpine region and that makes it really quite unique and fun to see like just this little short grass with little short wildflowers that have just such a short growing season but for me the varied looks makes it so cool. Now the other thing that I love about Rocky Mountain is the wildlife. Of all the national parks we've been to something about Rocky Mountain just the wildlife there seems so natural and healthy and wild. I love seeing the elk and those fat marmots and one of my very very favorite wildlife viewing experiences ever. This is going to sound so stupid because we've seen bears and moose and all sorts of things but when we were hiking to Dream Lake I looked in the lake and I could see three or four trout and they were just swimming around and hopping up to like just jumping up to eat the bugs and I just I think so often when you see fish you just see like these bloated fish at the ponds or people are feeding them bread or whatever but these are like this is how trout should be and they just be like greenback trout. To me it was a pretty magical experience and so when I think about Rocky Mountain I think about just the amazing wildlife. It's accessible. This is one of the things that makes it pretty special is although it is quite a hiker's park there are so many hikes that you can do to some really really beautiful areas it's also extremely accessible. We saw tons of families there the last time we visited. There are several beautiful scenic drives that you can do and several short little walks around these just picturesque lakes. And then the last is just the gateway towns on Rocky Mountain you know on the east you've got Estes Park which is just a fun little town to hang out in and then on the other side is Grand Lake which is a resort town and so there's some great things to do besides like if you want I always think about it as an oreo you know like the national park might be the chocolate on the outside but sometimes that cream filling are the things outside the park and so there's some good cream filling in Rocky Mountain National Park. Okay next up is let's talk about things to do at Rocky Mountain National Park. Now right now we're just going to talk about things to do inside the park and then later on we will cover some things that you can do in those gateway towns outside the park. So the first thing is the Bear Lake region. One of the reasons why that is so popular is because it has several really wonderful hikes in that sub-alpine ecosystem there. You can hike right around Bear Lake. Bear Lake is is a very accessible hike very short walk very picturesque and then from there the trail branches off to several other lakes there are like five lakes right around there. Nymph Lake and Emerald Lake and Dream Lake. And I just liked on those like those smaller five lakes hike is like it's not like you have to say I'm going to hike all the way to the fifth lake you can go to the second one and turn around if you want like I love how you have the option of seeing some great stuff really early on on the trail and then turning around if you choose not to go the whole hike. Okay the next one is we have one mile hikes. Rocky Mountain has so many lakes and there's one mile trails around several of them and the other thing that's kind of cool is that there's several of these little lakes outside of the park and so like if you don't want to deal with like going into the park and all the crowds you can go to some of these smaller ones like Lily Lake which is outside the park and you can just walk around that and I mean there's Lake Irene, Sprog Lake I mean there's so many little lakes that are just one mile little loops around that are really nice and you get great mountain views and just a pretty mountain lake. Great birding too a lot of birds hang around those lakes so if you like checking out birds that's a good one. Also there's a really cool little spot there called the Alluvial Fan and this is I mean it's kind of a tragic story but it's also a really scenic site so they built a dam up in the hills before it was a national park and and then at some point in the 1980s the dam burst and it flooded the town of Esses Park and a bunch of rocks came crashing crashing down into the valley so if you visit it today you see this kind of roaring river coming down and all these rocks spread out these boulders they're spread out all over in what they call an alluvial fan but really scenic and fun to climb around on the rocks and and to see that roaring water that was pretty cool. And it's kind of fun to see the kids like they just like to scramble around the rocks you see lots of people taking pictures there it's fun. Okay the next up is the scenic drives so the first big scenic drive in the national park was called the Old Fall River Road actually it's probably called the Fall River Road back in the day now they call it the Old Fall River Road because it's kind of been replaced by the Trail Ridge Road which Cheryl will talk about in popularity but that Old Fall River Road is still there so it is a dirt road and it has a few switchbacks that go up and I loved this because you were riding up in the valley with mountain walls on both sides and you could see all these waterfalls coming down and I loved the gradual rise to the top that was that's kind of special it's also a one-way road and the speed limit is only 15 miles an hour and so when you get up to the very top of the pass you then have to come back down along on the Trail Ridge Road which would be the next scenic drive. Yeah so the Trail Ridge Road I think is probably the number one reason people visit Rocky Mountain National Park. This road is something else you start in Estes Park so it's around like 7,500 feet elevation and then you end up over 12,000 feet elevation and along the way you get to see all these really cool lookouts and overviews and I mean just even from the very beginning the first one you can see into Estes Park and you get those peaks. It is not the highest road in the country it gets over 12,000 feet and the highest road is actually in Colorado that gets over 14,000 feet and so they call it the highest continuously paved road in the country you know that has to be the highest something right but it is a unique experience I mean I remember the first time I drove that road I came over to the park from Denver one day and did the drive all the way over to Grand Lake and then went all the way back I was all by myself and I was just amazed and blown away. We actually created a completely free printable for you to do the Trail Ridge Road because there's reservations on their vehicle restrictions timed entry things and then all the lookouts and so in our free downloadable printable you can just go get that and it will get you a great game plan to get started on the Trail Ridge Road. Next thing here on the things to do is to look for wildlife. Let's first talk about bears there are only about 20 or 25 bears in the park to my knowledge so it is not likely that you're going to see a bear there are no grizzly bears and then they're the ones that are there are only black bears although my friend saw a black bear in Esses Park so that's kind of interesting he still might see one but the showstoppers here are the elk really the elk is the main showstopper you're going to see them all over town in Esses Park you're going to see them in the national park on both the east and the west sides the elk are awesome so they're they're kind of the main thing that you'll see but you also could see moose we saw some moose on the west side and we always love seeing moose that's our favorite and so those are those to me are kind of the two big ones but then again don't forget about the little guys like the little marmots and the pikas that you'll see along the rocks I think those are super fun as well. Okay next one that I enjoyed is the Holdsworth Historic Site this is on the west side and it's it's only about a mile walk out to it I think a very flat walk out to it and it crosses the river through that beautiful valley on the west side and then there's cabins there these there's these historic cabins this was once a homestead or a settlement before it was a national park by a guy and his wife their last name was Holdsworth and what happened was they were kind of kicked out of Denver because they were German so during World War I America's didn't care for the Germans too much and so they kind of fled over into the valley there where they could set up a dude ranch over there a story that kind of resonates with me because my great-grandfather came over here when he was a kid as an eight-year-old right before World War I so I know that he went through some of that same treatment during World War I so I thought that story was interesting and resonated with me I liked seeing the cabins and then again the valley was really beautiful so Holdsworth Historic Site pretty interesting little spot. Hidden Valley Junior Ranger Headquarters we stopped here and they had plenty of rangers there and they had these great little backpacks with like soil thermometers and magnifying glasses and like a laminated sheet of activities and a little trail you could go around and learn about the area and I mean it's kind of aimed at kids but I found it very interesting I think I was into it as much as our kids were. Last are just the lakes now you actually can get and swim in any lake in Rocky Mountain National Park besides Bear Lake and Frog Lake but the thing is is nobody does and let me tell you why. First of all freezing water temperatures I mean like 50 degrees year-round it is super cold and then to add on you've got moss super sharp rocks and leeches so I mean if you can handle all that feel free to jump in but I do have some ideas coming up later on in this video if like water is your thing some places you can swim get paddle boards things like that there will be a good spot for you. Next let's talk about the 2024 updates in Rocky Mountain so for this year so they've been working on finishing up a couple of projects that they started last year and the first one is the Fall River entrance they've been working on the little ranger houses and it's really not that big of a deal they're hoping these will be open in June but if they're not just remember you can still use the Beaver Meadows entrance okay so it's not that big of a deal the other thing is they've been working on improving the Moraine Park campground and so hopefully keeping our fingers crossed that'll be open soon in June. Okay now we always recommend people check the National Park website before they go there's a little thing that says alerts in the upper right you click on that and it's going to tell you like the construction progress if the roads are closed if it requires a reservation to get into the park things like that and it's always important to check on that because it can change fairly quickly. Now the next thing is is that Rocky Mountain is a timed entry reservation park okay this park isn't that big and 4.5 million visitors visit it and so they do have a timed entry reservation system and so a couple things to know is it pretty much the weekend before Memorial Day through mid-October that's when it's required. Rocky Mountain has like two timed entry things okay the first one is just to enter the park in general and that is between 9 and 2 p.m every day okay so that one to me is not that intimidating because you can do a lot of sightseeing after 2 p.m or it's not that hard to get into the park before 9 but the other one is the Bear Lake Corridor that we've talked about has a lot of the great hikes you need a timed entry 5 a.m in the morning to 6 p.m at night and just for a point of reference if you were wanting to sneak in after 6 p.m the sun sets around 8 p.m so you'd have a little bit of time to explore the park but not too much because the sun is setting a little earlier here. Okay up next let's talk about when to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. So the main travel season is Memorial Day to the end of September. Memorial Day things are starting to open up not all the roads necessarily might be open at that point but that's kind of when it's really kicking off and then into September great fall foliage so that's the main travel season. Yes and the park is open the entire year and there's actually things to do the whole year but just keep in mind that several of the big roads like Trail Ridge and Fall River are closed a good portion of the year and that's why that summer season is so popular is because both those roads are open. One thing that's really important to know is about the weather so the weather is actually gorgeous during the summer like you can escape the the heat in the summer by being in Rocky Mountain National Park because you're at such high elevation that it doesn't really get all that hot. The other thing to know is that the temperature swings are pretty big and wild and so meaning you could wake up in the morning it could be very chilly or cold in the morning and still get up into the 80s by the afternoon and so you know we I mean we love the summer but just know you we're going to want to wear layers because the temperatures can kind of swing wildly. Okay last thing to know that I think is great about visiting in the summer is just that they're that's when the wildflowers are in season I mean these tender flowers they're only they're only blooming for about 45 days a year and so like July is like the sweet spot for those wildflowers and it's pretty nice to see those. Okay now let's talk about getting to Rocky Mountain National Park. I mentioned earlier the main airport is Denver. Denver is the crossroads of the west and so you should be able to find a flight to Denver that's pretty reasonable and then it's only an hour and a half drive from Denver to get to Rocky Mountain National Park. Now my feeling is most people wouldn't fly into Denver solely to go to Rocky Mountain. You're going to team this up with something else. So let me just give you a few ideas based on some people that we've talked to that we've helped travel out here to the west. We help a lot of people travel to the west and we'll cover some some ways that we can help you out later but this this is what a lot of people have told us they've done. They've flown into Denver, visited Rocky Mountain and then worked their way up into Wyoming to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and then maybe they flew home from like Jackson or Bozeman Airport in Montana. Another road trip that you could do is you could go into Denver, visit Rocky Mountain and then you could make your way through Colorado down to the Four Corners region. Some of the best mountains in Colorado are down there. The Million Dollar Drive, the Silverton Durango Train, Ouray, Telluride. I mean this is such an amazing area and then if you get into the Four Corners region you've got a lot of Native American sites that you can visit and see and then you can fly out of Phoenix to go home. Pretty cool trip. Other people will go through Colorado and all the way circle back around to Denver so they might do Pikes Peak and even down into that San Juan Mountains in the Four Corners region and come all the way back to Denver. But let me tell you what we did. We are from Utah so we drove from Salt Lake City over to Rocky Mountain through I-70 which goes through the Colorado Rockies. These are some of the best mountain towns and most famous mountain towns that you'll see like Aspen and Vail and Breckenridge and our very favorite Glenwood Springs. And so we visited these along the way. This by the way is the highest region in Colorado as well. It's actually higher than Rocky Mountain National Park so some of the peaks, some of the drives, some of the views are absolutely off the charts. We made a whole video about this Colorado nine-day road trip that if you want to see how to kind of link these together, watch that video. We'll put a card here and then we'll put it in the description at the bottom so you can watch it when the video is over. But that was one of my favorite road trips of all time is going to visit all those parks or all those cities and then Rocky Mountain National Park. One other thing that I've helped people out with that I've talked to people that they've done is they've gone from Rocky Mountain through I-70 through those mountain towns and then down through the Utah National Parks and end their trip in Las Vegas where they can fly home. So that Denver to Las Vegas road trip provides some of the very best mountains and some of the most amazing red rock in the entire country. That road trip is something we can't recommend highly enough. That is epic. Yeah and they call it actually has a name the Red Rock to Rockies Road Trip. I mean seriously getting to see like those awesome mountains and then the deserts of Utah with the cool rock formations. Oh my gosh. How long do you think it would take to do that trip? That's about a two-week trip if you do it properly. You know you can scrunch it down a little bit more but but that's just an amazing two-week road trip. And also we did we have a video we'll put in the description as well on our Utah National Parks road trip. So we did one where we did all five Utah National Parks in six or seven days and then we did that Colorado road trip as well. So those two linked together you could watch those and get an idea for the road trip of your life. Okay now we had a few technical issues in between the time we filmed this and the time we edited it and we actually lost a bunch of clips. So we're re-filming some of this video and the funny thing is in the meantime we got a little dog. So you might see a dog. That's the life of a YouTuber losing some stuff like that but but that's okay we get to talk about Rocky Mountain again. So and we tried our very best to recreate how we looked like a month ago. Okay let's talk about driving in Rocky Mountain National Park real quick and what you need to know as you're driving around the park. All right so the first thing to know is that you're going to need a car when you go to Rocky Mountain National Park most likely. They do have a shuttle system and we'll talk about that in a minute but you can drive your car through a lot of the park and we think you should bring your car. Yeah for sure the speed limit generally is about 30 miles an hour in the park so it's pretty slow driving. Remember you're mountain driving there's a lot of twists and turns. On the old Fall River Road which is the only dirt road that I can think of that you might get on that is a very well graded road but it is 15 miles per hour on that road. All right the next thing is because of some of these windy roads including the Fall River is there is a limitation of vehicles longer than 25 feet can't go on the old Fall River Road and that would include also if you're pulling a trailer. There might be a few other dirt roads that I can't think of at the moment but basically if you have a car you should be fine. Next thing to know is there are no gas stations in the park so fill up before you go in. You might not have any self-reception you might get a little bit when you get way up on top at the Alpine Visitor Center on the top of the Trail Ridge Road but don't really plan on it. All right the next thing to know about is waters and restrooms within the National Park. So Rocky Mountain is pretty primitive and so you'll see a lot of pit toilets and not a lot of refill stations like water refill stations within the park. You can get water at campgrounds there's flushing toilets at the campgrounds and also water and flushing toilets at the visitor centers. There are two places to eat within the park and that is the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of the Trail Ridge Road. They have a little cafe out there that's beautiful views while you're eating and then the other one is the Fall River Visitor Center. This is kind of down in the valley. I'm actually a little surprised they have a restaurant there because it's kind of right by Esse's Park but they do have a little restaurant there and so those are the only two places to eat. Most likely you'll spend most of your time eating in Esse's Park. Okay now we mentioned shuttles. So there are shuttles in Rocky Mountain National Park but they only cover a certain part of the park. They don't go over the Trail Ridge Road or anything like that. So it's mostly in that Bear Lake Corridor area that there are some shuttle routes. Okay and the nice thing about the shuttles is they're free and they don't require reservations. So there's a big park and ride parking lot there. A really large parking lot. So you just park in there and then there are actually two different shuttle routes. One goes to Moraine Park and then the other goes to the very popular Bear Lake. And so they have different stops along the ways depending on the hikes that you might want to do. But while it might be possible to get down to Bear Lake and park if you get there early enough, we just say don't even worry about it. Just park at the park and ride and take the shuttles where you need to go because they're fantastic. Yeah it's like a 15-minute ride. And the other nice thing is just that you could probably like get off the shuttle and then and then walk just back to the parking lot from like Beerstadt Lake or something like that. So you're not having to go there and back. You get a little bit of cheating on the hiking. Yeah you could team it up a little bit. And then also it's important to understand in Esse's Park there is a trolley system that takes you around the town. It's a free trolley system and it actually is really robust. It'll take you anywhere you want to go in town which is really cool. And then there's one other thing. There is something called the hiker shuttle. If you're a little bit more of a hiker that that's something that you could consider. That just goes right from Esse's Park to the park and ride. So you just that gets you to that jumping off point where you could take the Moraine Park or the Bear Lake Corridor shuttle. Something really cool about Rocky Mountain National Park is there are some great things to do outside of the park. We like to spend one half of our day in the park hiking around and sightseeing and then we like to spend the second half of our day just enjoying the the outside towns of Rocky Mountain. And there are two. There's Esse's Park on the east side and Grand Lake on the west side. So first up is water activities. Rocky Mountain there it's terrible. You don't want to get in the water of Rocky Mountain National Park. But outside there are a couple of lakes you can get into. And so at Esse's Park there's a marina, they have paddle boats, biking, and they're really affordable. But if you're going to be over at Grand Lake, you're going to go to the west side, Grand Lake is the better spot to go get in the water. They have more availability. It's a bigger lake. It's kind of more of a lake resort town. And so there are just some great activities to do at the lakes outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. I just looked at the video and I saw that you couldn't see that there is actually a dog between us. So I thought I would show you our our little puppy. He's actually two years old. He's not a puppy, but he looks like one. And our first dog that we've ever owned. We love him. Yeah. Okay now the next thing is horseback riding. So there is only, I believe, one horseback concessionaire operator within Rocky Mountain National Park. But there are several outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, both in Esse's Park and Grand Lake. I did one that started outside of the park and then it went into the park. And it was an absolutely beautiful ride. Just a wonderful experience. I mean I've done a lot of horseback rides in different national parks and this was one of the best. So cannot recommend that highly enough. All right next is the Stanley Hotel. This is a really historic building and it has a great history tour. But what really is exciting about the Stanley Hotel is it's rumored to be haunted. And on the tour they'll tell you all sorts of great stories about the Shining because that's where Stephen King came up with the idea for the Shining. And the tours are great. They're about an hour and a half, about 20 bucks. And I really enjoyed it. I want to go back and see some of their ghost tours. I want to do something besides a historic tour. Okay next step is to visit Elkhorn Avenue. This is in Esse's Park. It's the main kind of shopping area and public area in Esse's Park. Now we're not really shoppers but we do like going down there because it's right along the Fall River. And so you can walk along the river. You can walk down the main street and look at the restaurants and the shops. They have a pretty cool little Christmas shop there. And then they have several really good restaurants. They have taffy shops. You can see them making the taffy in the window. And so it's just kind of a public space that has you know an energy about it. And so that's kind of a fun spot to visit. Next up is to go shopping on the west side at Grand Lake. There's a big boardwalk street, Grand Avenue, where there's a lot of these little stores too. So you can do if you're a shopper you could go to both Esse's Park and Grand Lake. Next up is e-biking. So this is like our new favorite way to explore any area that we're visiting is to hop on an e-bike and just ride around. You're out in nature. You're not looking through the windshield but you're still covering kind of a lot of ground and seeing a lot of interesting things. We have not done it yet in Rocky Mountain but we plan on doing it this fall. And I did talk to the Chamber of Commerce guy at Grand Lake and he says that the best spot to do it is to go from Grand Lake up the west side because there's not as much traffic there. And they say that it's actually really good for the animals. The animals prefer people on e-bikes versus the cars because it's just less intrusive for the wildlife. Okay I just changed the camera angle again so you can see the little guy here with us while he's on her lap. And that actually gets me to the next thing is that I know a lot of you are visiting with your dogs. And that's one of the big questions of Rocky Mountain is what can you do with your dog there. So you cannot hike on any of the trails in Rocky Mountain with your dog. They're not allowed on any trails within the park. There are two picnic areas that I can think of. Sprague Lake and Endo Valley that have kind of picnic areas where you can have your dog out there on a leash. But if you're wanting to go hiking with your dog do that in Estes Park. So because it's outside of Rocky Mountain National Park they have dog friendly trails that you can do there. We actually have these in our guide that we're going to talk about later in the video here. Okay so next up let's talk about lodging. We all need a place to stay right? So the first thing you need to know about lodging at Rocky Mountain National Park is that there are no in the park lodges. Most people stay in the gateway town of Estes Park. And Estes Park is pretty great. It's a really cute little mountain town with like we talked about before there's Elkhorn Avenue with all those shops. And there's lots of chain hotels, local hotels, and verbos. Like lots of airbnbs verbos. And verbos are a really great option if you're looking to save some money and have a I love having just like a little communal spot to meet with your family and be able to hang out. Estes Park has a ton of hotels. They're going to be pretty expensive though during the busy season. If you get a little farther away from Estes Park you might be able to save some money. And I did want to share just a personal experience because we went there last year and I've already booked my accommodations to go there this upcoming year. And last year booked accommodations in April to go visit in June. And we were paying top dollar. It was over $300 a night and the place we stayed wasn't that great. Now the older wiser me worked on our reservations this last November for our accommodations in September. So I was on that really early. And I was able to find a verbo for $155 a night. And so I'm just saying that if you're really on top of things and you know you're going to be traveling in the following year, a lot of the hotels don't raise their rates until that actual calendar year. So you can book in November, December and save a lot of money and have a lot of availability. This is why we visit these parks often. We're always trying to learn. Yeah. And we learn from our mistakes. So that's good. Over on the west side is Grand Lake and near there is a town called Granby. These are both really really nice. Really nice over on the west side. But again we don't recommend staying there for your whole trip because you'd be driving all the way over the trail ridge road to get to most of the attractions in the park. If you prefer to camp there are some great camping options in Rocky Mountain too. The most popular campground is the Marine Park campground. It's the biggest one. You can get reservations and they even have a great big amphitheater where they have campfire programs where the rangers will come teach you about the park. The campgrounds in the park there are some So the reservable ones open up six months in advance on recreation.gov. And you can expect flushing toilets in the campground and some water spigots to give you access but like not warm water. These are pretty primitive campgrounds and also not a ton of shade either. They're pretty exposed. And then National Park campgrounds as a rule are pretty small. The campsites are pretty small I say. So they don't accommodate real big large RVs or trailers. Looks like limited to 35 to 40 feet depending on the campsite. And I bet you most of them are actually smaller than that. And we do have a blog post about this that we're going to link in the description if you want to know more about camping in Rocky Mountain. All right now let's move to food here. As I mentioned there's only two restaurants in the park. So if you're coming into the park our recommendation is to bring a picnic. There are several incredible picnic sites in Rocky Mountain National Park you're right there by the lake. I mean it is just a dream to picnic in Rocky Mountain I'd say. Now in terms of you know restaurants we like several places in Estes Park. Like it's one of the best like foodie gateway towns probably that we've seen for a national park. And one of our favorites is Antonio's Pizza. We took our kids here and since we have four kids we got the biggest pizza. It's 28 inches. Eight pieces. They were like each the size of a little Caesar's pizza. They were so big. And they only cut it in eight slices so it just took up it was like overflowing the plate. That was pretty fun. They had drones delivering the pizza to each table as well so that that was a pretty fun. And it was the most affordable place we ate. Was it? It was yep. Okay the next one is the is Penelope's. And this is a big hole-in-the-wall burger joint. And they have got some unusual hamburgers and they're huge and then their fries are homemade. People love those. There's always a line outside there but it's it's a fun little it's kind of like a little you got to go to Penelope's if you go to Estes Park. Yeah those burgers. And then probably my favorite place is actually the Wild Rose Restaurant. It's a little more formal than the others but man I just had some incredible dish. The chicken alfredo was fantastic. I don't know about what you had there but I really liked the Wild Rose Restaurant. And then the last thing that's really fun about Estes Park and the food is as you walk along the street there are these taffy machines in the windows. Like taffy is the Estes Park thing and it's kind of mesmerizing to watch it. But the taffy is actually really good. I always think taffy's gross because it's the stuff they throw at you at parades. But this stuff is pretty good. They have some good flavors and it's just kind of an Estes Park original. Now let's talk about just what to bring with you on your trip. A little bit about gear. We won't spend a lot of time on this but the weather changes pretty quickly and because you're up in the up high it can get pretty chilly in the mornings and the evenings. Mountain storms come and go and in June we got pelted with hell. It was sunny when we left that day in Estes Park and then as we drove the Trail Ridge Road a giant hell storm came in and then by the time we were done it was sunny again. I mean it's crazy how those work. Wear layers is the rule there. And bring a rain jacket. Let's see what do we have next here. The hiking boots. So the trails can get pretty muddy in Rocky Mountain especially if you're visiting like in May, June, maybe even July a little bit because you know that winter runoff is still happening. So be prepared for some mud if you're going to get out on the trails. And it's high and dry so especially if you're from the east coast where you're used to humidity you'll want some moisturizer, chapstick, and for sure sunscreen because you are closer to that sun when you're up at that high elevation. Bring a water jug and a cooler. Remember there's not water everywhere so make sure you in addition to your water bottle have a jug so you can refill and then have a cooler so you can pack your picnic around. Okay now one of the very big questions anytime you're visiting anywhere is how long should you visit for. So with Rocky Mountain National Park we think you can get a very good overview of the park in two days. Some people just spend one day and drive the Trail Ridge Road but you're really short changing yourself if that's all you do. You want to get into the valleys and do a little hiking or walking to get a better experience. But you could actually go up to probably four days if you want to give it some time and just enjoy the mountains there. Yeah and especially if you like to explore the park for half a day and then do recreation the other half a day, four to five days will give you enough time to get to Grand Lake also and then Explore Estes Park that can make for a pretty good vacation. Lots of family-friendly things to do there so oh yeah. Coming up we've got our five biggest mistakes that people make when they visit Rocky Mountain National Park but first we wanted to share something with you that we think will help you with your trip. Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most crowded national parks in the nation. Every year 4.5 million people visit and mostly between the months of May through October. Add in 213 different lakes plus a timed entry reservation and it gets a bit complicated. It's completely worth it but it does require some planning. Now when we travel we don't want to waste our time and our money because we know that those are the two biggest resources for travelers and we don't want you to waste yours either. So we've created a two to five day Rocky Mountain itinerary that helps you see the park in the most efficient order. Our itinerary has detailed descriptions of each activity in the park and it will tell you how long it takes to do them. We also give you ratings on each of them so you know which ones to do and which ones to skip based on the amount of time that you have available to visit the park. We also have these star ratings for things outside the park so you don't waste your money on things that aren't really that worth it to you. So the itinerary is flexible again you could do only a couple of days or you could do more days and it'll make sense as you look at it but it's also flexible to your crew that you're traveling with. So we travel with our kids and with our retired parents and so we're always thinking about things like accessibility, kid-friendly activities, and then when we go places on our own we do a lot of hiking. We'll do you know 10 plus miles in a day sometimes so we have kind of all those covered in different layers in the itinerary. So for example if we recommend a hike to do we'll give you a backup option that would be easier if you can't do something like that. And we live in Utah so Colorado is our neighbor. We have spent hundreds of hours in Rocky Mountain National Park and we've actually spent eleven thousand dollars of our own money to create this guide for you. We wanted to do all the activities so we could give our honest opinion about things that are worth it and things that aren't and we spent our money to help make good maps for our guides so it's really easy to understand. We want these guides to just be something that you can print and take with you and be ready to go. Since 2020 we've sold over 12,000 travel guides to help couples and families travel to these great places out west and it really brings us a lot of joy. And we try to keep these really affordable. You know in Rocky Mountain a four-hour tour costs $150 and we keep the price of our guides under $10 per day and we offer a discount if you buy more than one guide. So if you're considering like going to the Colorado mountain towns doing a little road trip, if you buy the two guides together you get a 10% discount. If you want to add arches and canyon lands onto it, now you get 20% off. So yeah, if you buy three or more guides we give you 20% off. So we just want to make your trip affordable. We have dozens of reviews that you can check out on our website for these itineraries but here's one that we want to share with you right now. Alright, this one's from Eric who said, my wife and kids absolutely loved our trip. The guide made me, dad, look like the hero. I am planning more trips using the guides well worth the small investment. You can have this itinerary in your hand in just a few minutes. Just go to our website wereintherockies.com, click on the Rocky Mountain National Park Guide. When you purchase it, it'll be emailed to you immediately. It'll also be available on the website immediately to click to download. If you want to you can set up an account that it will always be in there for you that you can reference back to. It's not tied to an app and it's not mailed to you in the mail. It's something you can have within the next two minutes. And sometimes people worry about, well, I'm not tech savvy. How am I going to print this off or pull it up? And I want you to know that we will take good care of you. Our good friend Becca works for us Monday through Fridays and the big purpose of her job is to help people if they need anything. And so if you're having any struggles with any sort of downloads or extra questions about the guides, she is there. One question we have from people is whether they should buy now or buy it closer to their vacation. We say buy it now so you can start preparing for your vacation. This is a big part of helping you prepare for it. And we offer free updates for 18 months. So if we go and we make some updates, which we try to do every January, those will be in your account automatically as long as you purchased it within the last 18 months. One last thing we want to tell you to set your mind at ease is that you being happy with our guides is so important to us that we offer the best friend guarantee, which means if you buy our guides, use them to plan your trip, go on your trip, and then don't come back so happy with your guide that you want to tell your best friend about it, we will refund your money. We want to make sure that you have an incredible trip. All right, so just to recap what you get. So when you download our itinerary, you're going to be getting the game plan, two to five days of what you can do in Rocky Mountain National Park. Each activity listed on there is going to tell you how long it takes to do it, like how difficult it is, like if it's a hike, and it's going to have a star rating to let you know how cool it is. So if you have lots of time, you can do the one, two, or three stars, like do all of them. Or if you're pressed for time, just go hit those three star things. We've got great maps to keep you oriented, pictures. Like we mentioned, we have some ideas of things to do with your dog. We've got restaurant recommendations, activities within Estes Park and Ground Lake. This is going to be a good game plan to give you an amazing time. And on average, our customers report that this saves them 10 to 20 hours of time planning their trip. Well worth it, for sure. Okay, but now we, as promised, six mistakes that people make when they visit Rocky Mountain National Park. Okay, so first one is stressing out too much about the reservations. Now you do want to get on there and get your reservations for the park, particularly the Bear Lake Corridor. That one requires reservations throughout most of the day. The rest of the park, the reservation period is from like nine o'clock to two o'clock. So it's super easy to enter before nine or even after two and you can still see tons and do tons. Number five, we've already talked a little bit about, but I just want to reinforce it, is be prepared for mountain storms. Bring that rain jacket, bring your umbrella, and just know what's a possibility when afternoon rolls around. Okay, the next mistake is visiting on the weekend. Travel plans, sometimes you can't change them. But because Essex is close to Denver, a lot of Denverites, Coloradans, they head out to the mountains to visit these places on the weekend, so it's going to be busy. The next one is don't underestimate the effects of elevation sickness. Elevation is legit in Rocky Mountain National Park, and even if you're accustomed to higher elevation like us Utahns, we feel a little bit around 12,000 feet. And so just be prepared for it. And it's really not that hard. Drink lots of water, avoid alcohol your first couple days as you're acclimating. And then if you start feeling like a headache, nauseous, weak, maybe try to get to some lower elevation until you get a little more comfortable. Okay, the next mistake is not knowing when the roads open. You just have to keep an eye on that if driving one of those roads is important to you. And I would say the Trail Ridge Road is such a unique experience in the National Parks that you want to try to visit when that's open. Next one is to not bring your dog. Even though our guide does have some things you can do with your dog, realize that there's going to be a lot of things you can't do if you bring your dog. Now there are kennel services in the Gateway Towns if you do, and you want to go on some of those bigger hikes. But even though we do love our doggo, our doggo doesn't normally travel with us. We just barely got him. But there's no plans to bring the doggo on our trips. Famous last words. Don't just say it. Okay. We know how they're a part of your family, but just be aware of the restrictions there. The last mistake that we want to cover here is feeling like you have to do every single walk or hike around the park. There are several just picturesque lakes that you can walk around that are just short and easy walks. What you want to know is just which ones to do it. And again, we've covered that in the guide with how it fits together with the day, the game plan for the day, and the things that you're doing. And then we just fit those things in there. It really fits in like a puzzle. So you want to check that out so you know which things to do, which things you can pass on if you need to. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey through Rocky Mountain. We hope you learned something. We hope we helped you out. And we hope you have a great trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.