#2016LWOW Day 3: Hiking Estes Cone

Estes Cone is right behind us!  

Good morning from Jellystone-- we have just woken up from perhaps the best sleep ever, which is prone to happen after you hike to the top of a mountain!  We are so proud of our accomplishment yesterday.... let me tell you about it:

The Walshes are from Denver and have done quite a bit of hiking in this area.  They recommended we go to the summit of Estes Cone.   It is rated "strenuous" and is 6.5 miles total round trip.  Will is 8 years old and has 8 year old legs and 8 year old stamina, so in my mind, I was hoping to coerce him to the halfway point and then perhaps he and I would turn around and go back to the trail head.  The good thing about having another family hike with us is that there is some peer pressure to keep going and to keep the moaning/complaining to a minimum, so on we went to the tippy top.

It took us 3 hours to get to the summit-- the last hour was scrambling up steep rocks-- we climbed 800 feet in the last 2/3 of a mile and it took us A LONG TIME.  Will and I would walk for a minute, then stop for a minute for the last hour.  We kept seeing people descending the trail and they all had big smiles on their faces and promised us it was worth it.

At long last......  we arrived!  And it was awesome!

That view though....

UNREAL

It only took us about an hour and a half to get back to the trail head where we loaded up to head to Estes Park to get ice cream and our souvenir t-shirts and the most crowded and poorly designed grocery store I've ever been in (I'm looking at you, Safeway!) and finally back to camp!

The Brandows arrived (WHEEEEEEEE!!!) from Pasadena and we had a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and chips before showering and getting to bed quite early.

Where I slept and slept and slept .... before being surprised with donuts from "You Deserve a Donut!"  Thanks Walshes!  :)

Yogi was out making rounds in the campsites-- we tried to wave him down, but he just put a #1 in the air and drove on by.  We later found out that you have to pay $15 for him to visit your campsite. WHAT?  Yogi is a capitalist.

View from my cot