Estes Park Trip: June 13, 2009; Day 8

Today was the first really nice day of the trip. Up to this point, the weather had been really cold and cloudy. This morning Dave’s dad came to the cabin early to visit. He made Tyler and Garrett’s days by bringing them doughnut holes, which they ate way too many of. We headed up the mountain by our cabin so that Dave and his dad could take some pictures. We also took a few family pictures in this beautiful outdoor chapel at the top of the mountain.

A little while after we got back to the cabin, we had a rather large visitor. Dave noticed some people parking by our truck and taking pictures, and tried to figure out what was going on. He soon realized that we had a brown bear walking past our cabin. Tyler came to tell me the news and I went outside to see for myself. I’d been wanting to see a bear out there for so long, so I was incredibly excited. I made sure the boys stayed in the cabin and then went out with Dave and got a closer look. Not the smartest thing to do, but the bear was pretty busy tearing apart a bird feeder at the cabin across from us, so we felt fairly safe. Dave got some great pictures, which once I figure out how to load such large pictures into the blog, I’ll be able to share.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to go back into the park and take an easy walk around Sprague Lake. It was a beautiful lake and the boys had a great time seeing people fishing and seeing the ducks. Garrett especially loved the ducks and kept quacking at them. It was so cute! Dave was green with envy at the people he saw that had better cameras and accessories than his. One woman even stopped to talk about her lens with him, which made matters even worse. Especially since we can’t afford the $2,000 price tag for that particular lens. There was also a small wedding going on along the shore of the lake. It was cool, but it was really hard to keep the boys quiet while we were walking by.

We finished the day by having dinner at Dave’s dad’s cabin and then hung out and spent some time visiting with them, since it was our last night in Estes. It was a really great trip, and the boys had such a great time.