Rocky Mountain National Park (2017)

Rocky Mountain National Park actually never crossed my radar until Zach mentioned it to me. I am so glad he mentioned it because it is now one of my favorite national parks.

Planning Our Trip

RMNP really has one main road that goes through the park, Trail Ridge Road, so as we were planning we made sure to note where we wanted to stop on this road. It is really handy to have a map of the park to know where you want to stop, as there aren’t big signs saying, “STOP HERE!”

We had two days to see all that we wanted to see in RMNP so we broke up the park in half to somewhat “divide and conquer”. For us, the midpoint of the park was the Alpine Visitor Center. Midpoint meaning that the Alpine was as far as we could drive back through the park and still do the hikes and sights that we wanted to do.

Our first day was driving into the park from the south entrance. Since the drive is pretty long, we knew that once we drove past some of those sights we wouldn’t be coming back the next day. So before racing to our campsite we made sure to stop at the overlooks we wanted pictures from.

From there, we planned on seeing five specific things in the park:

Emerald Lake
Tundra Community Trail
Forest Canyon Overlook
Alpine Visitor Center
Bear Lake

These places will have their own individual posts since there is just too much information to put in one post.

I did want to quickly share about our amazing campsite though!

Our Campsite

Our campsite was easy to get to and so beautiful! I was very impressed with the incredible views at our site as well as how well kept the sites were.

There was plenty of fresh water available at pumping stations and a man who sold firewood, since bringing your own wood is prohibited in all national parks.

It was a great way to spend a couple of days!

**NOTE: RMNP does not have showers, however there is a space for those who want to take solar powered bucket showers, but you must bring your own bucket-shower.

RMNP is truly unique in that it gives us a view into the tundra and alpine levels of the mountains. Other parks only have access to this from long hikes, but this park has a great, well-kept road to those hard-to-reach places.

We loved RMNP and can’t wait to visit again in the future!

Much love.

Chelsea