Estes Park, Colorado

This year, for New Year’s weekend, Donovan and I wanted to abandon our typical New Year’s Eve plans and make a last minute trip. Usually, we host a New Year’s Eve “come as you are” party at our house where we cook big pots of chicken and sausage gumbo and our friends and family come and go throughout the night to hang out. Our lamps are all on timers, so we always joke that when the lights go out at 10pm, it’s time for everyone to leave! Since COVID numbers were jumping up in our area, we thought it would be best to not have a ton of people at our house, and instead find another adventure!

We found some decent airfare to Denver, so we decided to spend a few days in Colorado. I’ll share more about our trip in future posts, but today I wanted to highlight our day spent in Estes Park, Colorado!

Estes Park is a little less than a 2 hour drive from downtown Denver, and the drive is gorgeous. No matter which way you go to get there, the Rocky Mountains are on your left, and when they’re covered in snow, it’s just a beautiful sight.

Since we traveled to Estes Park on New Year’s Day, we weren’t sure how busy (or not busy) things would be, so we decided to leave the hotel fairly early to get a head start on the crowd.

We arrived in Estes Park around 9:30am or so and headed straight towards Black Canyon Inn to fly Donovan’s drone for a bit. If you’re looking for a great place to stay in Estes Park, Black Canyon Inn is a good one. It’s a small group of condos behind the Stanley Hotel. Many of the units have a great view of Lumpy Ridge and are within walking distance of the main street.

Since Black Canyon Inn is just on the outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, it was safe for Donovan to fly his drone there. He captured some great footage of the craggy mountains, and I can’t wait to watch it in 4k!

Our favorite view in this area are the Twin Owls (photo above). I mean, don’t those 2 big rocks look like 2 owls sitting next to each other?

After a bit of (frozen) drone flying, we decided to head into Rocky Mountain National Park. I was really glad that we didn’t have to purchase tickets or time slots ahead of time, as that makes our last-minute planning a bit more difficult. There was a long line to get into the park (about 10:30am), but fortunately, it went pretty fast.

The drive through the park in the winter is just absolutely stunning. We mainly come to RMNP in the summer and early fall, so seeing this much snow was unbelievable!

Our first stop in the park was Sprague Lake. We often joke that Sprague Lake HAS to be the first hike we do in the park to get us acclimated to the elevation. If you’re not familiar – Sprague Lake is a handicap accessible trail – mostly flat – and less than a mile. I will say, though, Sprague Lake Trail has some really great views of the mountains…and I’m always down for an easy hike!

It’s probably difficult to tell in the picture above, but Sprague Lake was completely frozen over. I’ve never seen a lake like this before! Donovan and I started walking around the side of the lake when we noticed that there were people ice skating and walking all across the lake. Immediately, we were both eager to jump out there ourselves.

At first, in my head, I thought “ok, we’re only going to take a picture and then walk back.” Not quite.

We ended up dancing and playing on the frozen lake for about an hour. It was just so unreal to us! I’m sure we look like true southerners! Ha! We only heard the ice crack once…but it was this wildly loud crack that made both of us look at each other and race back towards the trail.

I really wanted to hike up to Dream Lake – it’s one of my favorite spots in the park, and I knew if Sprague Lake was frozen, that Dream Lake had to be as well. Plus, the weather was absolutely gorgeous (albeit a little cold), so it would have been a great day to do it.

On the way up to the Bear Lake Trailhead (where you pick up the trail to Dream Lake), I couldn’t stop yawning. We were sitting in traffic of people waiting to find parking spots (per usual) and I just kept getting more and more tired. Once we found a parking spot, I told Donovan I just needed a 15 minute power nap. He turned off the car, we rolled down the windows, and literally napped in the car. I’m sure everyone walking by thought we were dead, but it’s exactly what I needed!

Once we both woke up from our little power nap, we decided we didn’t have enough energy to do the Dream Lake trail. It’s only about 2 miles round trip, but we didn’t have enough water, nor did we have lunch. Instead, we decided to walk around Bear Lake (another great, flat trail). Bear Lake was also completely frozen!

Bear Lake was also pretty packed – there were lots of families playing on the lake, hiking, and just mulling around. We took our time walking around the lake and enjoying all the views and snow.

After completing the loop, we attempted to make our way down to Cub Lake and Fern Lake Trails – more of my favorite flat trails. Fern Lake is also where my mom and I ran into a moose (literally) on a previous trip. I’ll share to share about that in another post. Unfortunately, the access to these trailheads was closed due the wildfires from last fall. We were disappointed, but took it as a sign that it might be time for us to start making our way back into Denver. Neither one of us were super excited about driving back on the windy, mountain roads in the dark!

We made a few more driving laps around RMNP before we left the park to scout out dinner. At the time of our trip, Estes Park was only allowing certain restaurants to host indoor dining. I called a few while we were on the road, but many of them had completely booked reservations. Usually I don’t have any problem eating in the car, eating in the hotel room, or just simply skipping a meal if I have to, but for whatever reason that night, I really wanted a hot meal at a table.

We ultimately ended up at Smokin’ Dave’s BBQ near the park entrance. They were only allowing about 10 tables at a time, so we put our names on the waiting list and sat in the car for about 45 minutes waiting on a table.

By the time we sat down, we were so hungry that we ate the entire order of cornbread as soon as the waitress sat it down. Neither Donovan nor I care for black eyed peas, so we just figure we’ll be very prosperous in the new year with all that cornbread! Ha!

Estes Park is, by far, one of our favorite mountain towns, and we love visiting Rocky Mountain National Park. Seeing it in the winter is also a neat experience that we’d highly recommend!