Rocky Mountain National Park Camping - Days 1 & 2

Soon after returning from our Amsterdam trip, we purchased a small popup camper to go camping in RMNP and Dinosaur land! So this was our first time camping with the trailer and we took 2 days to drive to the campground. About 3 hours into our first day, I noticed a loud humming sound. At first we thought it was the ratchet straps Carlton had used to tie water jugs to the top of the trailer but then he decided we should stop to check the trailer. When we did, we found that one lug nut was completely missing from one of the tires and the other four were all loose! So the wheel had been rotating unevenly causing the holes to get bigger. We were very lucky that we stopped before it got worse. The studs were stripped and stuck, so we had to unhitch the trailer and drive 20 minutes down the road to a trailer service center. Luckily they had 5 studs and 4 lug nuts, Carlton was able to reuse one of the other lug nuts. So it set us back about 1.5 hours but it could have been a lot worse!! Here's what the tire looked like - you can see the holes are bigger and misshapen:

We made it to the campground in one piece and once we got all set up, the kids were excited to ride their bikes in the campground!

Our first full day in the park we decided to hike to Alberta Falls - only 0.8 miles one way but lots of climbing and we were able to take the free shuttle to the parking lot. We saw some deer and a few chipmunks that were looking for free handouts.

We were very happy to have Christine and Brenden with us in RMNP! They were just one spot over in our campground, so we got to go hiking together and share a campfire in the evenings.

On the right, Avery is either roaring like a tiger or meowing like a cat...she did that in every version of this picture.

Chipmunk snatched a cheeto that had fallen on the ground.

They can be good little hikers when they want to be! I love that they hold hands.

We added a little more mileage to our hike by heading to Bear Lake instead of returning to our starting spot. We would have gone around the lake but there was snow covering about half the trail around the lake and the littles were done with hiking by then!

We finished our hike and got back to the campsite in time for it to rain! So the kids got to enjoy tablet time and we got to read and relax for a bit.

The next day we did a scenic drive through the park to find more wildlife.