~Country Livin'~: Colorado Trip Day 4

What an awesome day!!! Ricky cooked breakfast for us this morning which was a nice change from the "contiental breakfast" we have had the last couple mornings. Once we all got dressed and packed our lunch and drinks in the ice chest, we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park for the day. It was gorgeous and the views were amazing! Before we came here, we had already decided we wanted to take Trail Ridge Road all the way to the top. It was kinda a long drive, but worth every mile. The mountains are beautiful and we just really loved the scenery...and the COOLER temps! :o) We even got to play with a little snow which the kids thought was really fun. Up on the very top at Alpine Visitor Center, we took a break from driving to look around in the gift shop and stretch our legs. It was lunchtime and we were getting hungry so Ricky asked one of the park rangers where a good picnic area would be for us to eat our lunch. His suggestion was to go down to Lake Irene which wasn't too far from the visitor center. We found the picnic spot and enjoyed eating on the picnic table until it started to RAIN! We packed up everything really fast and ran to the van to finish eating while it rained pretty good. It was so refreshing!! Thankfully it didn't last long and we were able to take a short hike to see the lake which was beautiful of course. I just loved being surrounded by all the pine trees, trails, streams, mountains, etc. It really does you good to get out in the middle of the woods! Ricky and I really wanted to take Fall River Road so that is what we did next and we are so glad we did! It was by far much better than Trail Ridge and really allowed us to see more since we were actually driving through the mountains instead of driving around it. We saw several waterfalls and took a few short hikes to see more beautiful scenery. The pictures below do not do any justice of what we really saw with our eyes. It is SO beautiful here! Before we headed back to the condo we took a quick drive to Bear Lake to scout out the area to see what we might want to do tomorrow. Definitely more hiking! On the way out on Bear Lake Rd, we saw several mule deer just walking around. They were so close that we could probably have pet them! It was fun to see!! Hopefully tomorrow we will see more wildlife. Dinner tonight was not so great...we decided to try the Hunter Chophouse because we wanted steak/elk. The menu was too fancy for Ricky especially and he didn't like what the elk dish had on it so he opted for chicken fried steak instead. That didn't work out so well for him because the gravy on the steak was more like queso which he DID NOT like. My steak just wasn't anything special so I was disappointed. Although the food was not what we had hoped for, we had LOTS of laughter. Ryder was so hyper and being so silly and we were just having so much fun together. I love seeing my family happy and just enjoying each other's company. What a precious evening with my four blessings!!!