Cub Lake Hike

After our trip to Garden of the Gods on Saturday, we finally made it to Estes Park.  We stopped for dinner in town and then checked into our lodge at the YMCA of the Rockies.  We headed to bed soon after so that we could go on our hike first thing the next morning.

The Y has several hikes that they lead you on - we chose the shortest one and the one with the easiest classification since we a) had two children with us and b) we are NOT hikers.  We were in a group of about 10 others that were staying at the YMCA, all of differing hiking abilities, but there was only one other kid along and she was several years older.  But we had confidence our girls could make it through!

Starting off on the Cub Lake hike - we took the tail end of the group

Beautiful view of the mountains of Rocky Mountain National Park

Using her hiking poles to help along the way

Jillian loved spotting flowers all throughout the trip.  She and Meredith also did quite a bit of rock collecting!

This picture is probably a pretty accurate portrayal of the first half-ish of the hike.  Meredith was MISERABLE.  Jillian was only slightly more excited about our day's activity. In Meredith's defense, she fell early on and cut her hand (barely, though!) so at that point, she was ready to throw in the towel.  A while after this, I decided to award "non-whining points" that could be used to buy something special later in the trip.  There were literally no whines after that moment.  It was brilliant.  

Along the way, we spotted this mama and baby deer.  Mama kept a very, very close eye on us to make sure we did not get too close.  

A pretty waterfall along the way.

Finally! We made it to Cub Lake.  This took quite a bit longer than we imagined, so everyone was so happy to get there!  Especially because that also meant it was lunch time!

The lake was surrounded by chipmunks and ground squirrels, who were obviously very used to picnic-ers.  They were basically coming over and hopping in our backpacks hoping to find a crumb or two!

 Celebrating the half-way point on the hike with pictures at the lake.   On the way back down, our hike master handed over his title to the girls and they led the way the whole way back!  They did great!  And just after lunch it started to rain.  Then it started to hail!  They still kept on trucking and got tons of "no whining points!"