Last day in Rocky Mountain National Park

 Our last day in Rocky Mountain National Park was also our most ambitious.  We decided to get up early and beat the crowds to Bear Lake for a hike.  There were a lot of options and we decided to start conservative and see how the day went. 

The hike to Emerald Lake would pass two additional lakes and it was considered a relatively easy hike.

Pondering Nymph Lake...

Malcolom with a lot of energy

Water break...

The second lake in our journey...

The professional...

We could see trout in the lake that were so close, I could take pictures

Dream Lake...

Next stop, Emerald Lake

Jacob isn't really that tall...

Shelly thought that this one was hilarious for some reason...

Emerald Lake was Jacob and Malcolm's favorite...

This is a good one...

More wildlife...

As you can see, there were lots of options...

Emma was an impressive hiker...

Unfortunately, at 1:30 a thundershower arrived and made us double time it toward our car..

A brief stop at Alberta Falls in the rain.

 When we made it back to the car over five hours later we were tired and relieved to have not been struck by lightening. Later when we did the math and checked the pedometer we discovered that we hiked about 8 miles with a combined elevation gain of more than 1300 feet!  

So we went back to the cabin and gorged on pizza!