Hi, friends! I hope y’all had a great Labor Day weekend!
We spent most of it on Current River with my family and had a wonderful time!
If you missed my previous Colorado posts, check out part 1 here and part 2 here.
We left Breckenridge Wednesday morning and headed to find a hiking place I had heard a lot about called Sapphire Point.
This was an awesome, easy hike and such a cool spot! You could sit there and feed the chipmunks all day long.
We brought sunflower seeds but a couple shared some peanuts with us and the chipmunks seemed to like those a lot better.


The overlook showed us beautiful views of the Dillon Reservoir that we had seen the night before, but we were way higher up and a lot prettier view.




After this, we started making our way to Estes Park, CO.
We first stopped in Morrison, CO and saw the Red Rocks Ampitheater. It was super crowded here and honestly not worth the stop in my opinion. I think it would be neat to see a concert there sometime though.


We kept driving and next found our way near Boulder, CO.
We ate a picnic lunch and stopped at Chautauqua Park.
I wanted to do a hike here called the Royal Arch hike, but that trail was closed due to construction.
So we hiked around the Flatirons and saw lots of cool things! The Flatirons had a completely different vibe about them compared to the other mountains we had seen.


We also heard that there was a cool downtown area in Boulder called The Pearl Mall.
We went and checked it out and really didn’t like it all!
Way too crowded for us and lots of “culture”…

We got some ice cream (no plastic spoons here at all, only wooden spoons) and then kept driving towards Estes Park.

We finally made it to Estes Park that afternoon.
We first wanted to check out the Stanley Hotel!?!?
We couldn’t be right there next to it and not check it out, right?!? Please tell me you’ve watched The Shining!
The girls love scary movies and haven’t seen this movie yet, so we told them a little about the history of the hotel and movie before we went there.
This was another super crowded place, but I was so glad we were able to see it!

We didn’t have timed reservations for Rocky Mountain National Park on this day, so we had to wait until after 6:00 p.m. to go in because that’s when no reservations were needed.
While we waited we shopped downtown Estes Park and then had a picnic at a public spot near the park entrance.
While we were eating our supper, there was an elk that came right near us!


It was so cool to see!
It ended up walking right past our picnic table like no big deal.
We finally made it into Rocky Mountain National Park and headed for Sprague Lake.
It was getting closer to dark, so we knew we would only have time for one hike that evening.
Sprague Lake was a great one! It was a one mile loop around the lake and the weather was absolutely perfect!



On our way to Sprague Lake we saw quite a few elk and then on the way back, we saw a GIANT mule elk.

Pictures truly don’t do it justice with how big this elk was! We were amazed!



Well, this is all I had time for today! I was hoping I could do the rest of the trip all in this recap, but I’ll have to do one more later this week and it’s when we spent the whole day in Rocky Mountain National Park, so come back to check it out!
I hope you have a great week!

What beautiful hiking views!
I can’t get over the gorgeous pictures you got!! Now I want you guys to come out and visit us next. 😉
Yes, please!!!