Day 4: Hiking and Sergio at the Stanley Hotel

Since we are sleeping with the screens on but windows open when the sun comes up you automatically wake up so we were up at 7am ready to go this morning.  We decided to go on our first real hike of the trip so we both filled up the camelbacks, packed snacks, packed a snack for Riley, iphone for photos (I didn’t want to carry Paul’s camera on the hike although it would have taken much better photos of what we actually saw…), put on sunscreen, and headed out to the trail that leads directly into Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was a beautiful, sunny, warm day. 

We started walking and about 100 yards into the hike I spot poo on the trail…. animal poo of some type.  Whatever.  We walked on.  About another 50 feet there is more.  Another 100 feet and there is even more.  We are walking around it every other second. Now this doesn’t really matter except that we have been warned many times over that we are in bear country.  I say to Greg, “Is this a trail that horses go on or is this something a bit scarier?”  Hmmmmm…. As we walked on it was clear that this most likely was not a trail for horseback riding.  My powers of deduction concluded that this was bear poo, and there was a lot of it, and it wasn’t that old.  Commence slight freak out that Big John was anywhere around the corner. 

Ok, no need to let this ruin the hike.  We are surrounded by immense natural beauty.  It really was spectacular.  We all know bears don’t like people and stay away.  Yes this is true but it is still scary.  We have bear spray.  I hope that stuff really works.  I make Greg start to whistle just in case. We hiked from the open mountain side into a more forested area covered in white bark trees.  Aspens maybe?  I don’t know my trees very well.  Anyways, they were beautiful!  We came across what looked like a backcountry camping site and we stopped there for a water break.  In front of us there was a stack of tree limbs that were stacked into a teepee shape.  Weird!  I don’t know who did that or why but it was definitely manmade and miles into the trail halfway up a mountain.  Two words: blair witch.  We moved on and then I decided that I had had enough high altitude adventure/bear poo avoidance for the day and we turned around.  We took another trail back down that went right by a creek where we hiked around a bit and I was much calmer- no bear poo to be seen plus I got to explore the creek which was quite fun. 

We decided that we were all geared up and weren’t ready to go home yet.  We hiked a meadow trail for several hours and finally hoofed it back to the campsite, had lunch, and rested. 

We decided to go into town for awhile and stopped at a coffee/tea shop where I could post the blog.  We don’t have internet reception at camp unfortunately and the wifi station won’t work here either.  We then moved on and decided to check out the Stanley Hotel.  I had been there several years before in the winter, but wanted Greg to be able to experience it.  It is supposedly haunted, on the National Register of Historic Places, and Stephen King's inspiration for "The Shining."  Built in 1909, it was a mountain retreat for the wealthiest of the wealthy back in the day.  We decided to have dinner on the patio and just enjoy eating good food. The waiter told us about how the Colorado fires were getting worse and we could somewhat understand since it is so very, very dry here. We did worry about taking Riley in though.  Even though he has a camping bed and a chair (if I’m not sitting in it) he always seems to prefer resting in the dirt and dust.  He is now like the peanuts character Pig Pen and has a little aura of dirt around him at all times. That’s why we opted for the patio until we can get him a bath.  Sergio also made an appearance at the Stanley and seemed to really enjoy himself.

Ready to hike

Sign with rules!

Mountains

More mountains

Blair witch.....

Me

Greg and Riley

Self shot

The Stanley Hotel in downtown Estes Park

Is that a white ghost or is that Sergio!?!?

Employees claim they have heard someone playing this antique piano but when they went to check no one was there..... hmmmm.... I suspect a small white dog had something to do with it....