Walk In The Park

Well, today (yesterday, technically) we went to Rocky Mountain National Park.

To be honest, at first I'm not that interested to go to the national parks. I'm not a very nature-loving person after all (more like game-loving, lol)... I'm looking forward to the shopping part in somewhere around Fort Collins instead. But after I set my foot (or to be precise, car) in the vicinity of the national park, I knew immediately that this is something I'm going to love. And it's true...

We passed snaking road through canyon (snaking, like in Mario Kart DS, hahaha) to reach Estes Park, nearest town to the national park. The town was pretty much like Batu or Trawas in Indonesia (as Matt pointed out), but this one is much more developed. Well, practically most of the thing in here is more developed... After Estes Park, here come the Rocky Mountains National Park. Well, this is my first time to any national park, so it's a unique experience. First of all, it's huge (really huge). And then you can traverse the park with car (or rather you must, because the park covers a whole lot of ground). There are several conveniently placed stopping spot to pull over the car and enjoying the scenery (and photo sessions too). And they also have several mountain trails for hikers, you just need to park your car on the parking lot and start hiking through the trails. All in all, if you want to see everyplace, try to hike every trail, you might need a whole week to do so.

We spent nearly 4 hours inside the national park, stopping every other time to admire the scenery (and took pictures, of course), and yet I think we only covered less than 5% of the whole park. Our starving stomach limited our travel inside the park, it's demanding to be filled, thus we went back to Estes Park to grab some food. And luckily, on our way back, we saw three elks laying around the trees. I was able to took several close-up pictures of the elks. And I also found a flowering cactus, a sign of luck, hahaha...