Day 1 Austin to Amarillo Day 2 Amarillo to Raton Day 3 Raton to Castle Rock Day 4 Castle Rock to RMNP Day 5 RMNP to Fort Collins Day 6 Fort Collins to Moab Day 7 Moab to Flagstaff Day 8 Flagstaff to VEGAS Day 9 VEGAS to Las Cruces Day 10 Home Again

Day 5 (7/4/02) - Rocky Mountain National Park to Fort Collins, CO

We woke up in Moraine Park to a clear, beautiful morning and decided to go for a hike on the nearby Cub Lake Trail.  I had hiked this same trail in the dead of winter a couple of years prior (see pictures in the archive) and was curious to see what it looked like in the summer.  However, due to an errant map and my Swiss cheese memory, we thought the hike was going to be about 6 miles.  It ended up being more like 8 miles, plus a mile back on the road to the starting point, plus another half mile or so to the campsite from the trailhead.  That would've been the end of it, except that on the way back we somehow managed to forget where the campsite was in relation to the trailhead.  We got back to camp right at noon, just as a thunderstorm was descending from the mountains, so we had to pack up hastily to avoid both being drenched and thrown out by the rangers for exceeding our reservation.

We drove out Highway 34, stopping for lunch in Loveland before heading up to Cheyenne, Wyoming just to say that we'd been there.  We then drove back down to Fort Collins, checked into a motel, and headed out to a fireworks display over Sheldon Lake.  It was one of the few fireworks displays still being held in that area due to the burn bans, and it was well worth the trip.