Golden Magic

On Sunday afternoon Jay and I went on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. We started at Bear Lake, proceeded to Bierstadt Lake and came down a mountain with twelve switchbacks to end at the trailhead for Bierstadt Lake. Coming down the mountain was absolutely spectacular. It truly was golden magic with the afternoon sun gleaming through the aspen trees below. We could also view 14,000 ft. mountain peaks and a lake down below. We long for the day when we can bring Penny along on these hikes. But, she'd probably have been very cold. The wind was bitter. In fact, they had had so much ice and snow that the road up to Bear Lake had been closed until noon. It was well worth the hike even though Jay started catching a cold afterwards. I guess it was his turn since I caught a cold at the end of our last hike together. So, he's been staying home getting well today. And I went shopping at Walmart this morning and picked up my very first article of clothing for Penny. I'll have to take a picture of it and show it to you in the next blog.

Oh, I forgot to mention our encounters with "wildlife". Not all of the animals were very wild. Even though there was a sign asking people not to feed the ducks, they obviously thought they could help themselves to humans' food. I literally had a duck practically crawl into my backpack to check out my stash. He came so close that he actually pecked the bottom of my hiking boot. Later when we were driving back to Estes Park we got to hear the male elks doing their bugling to round up their harems of lady elks. It's a really interesting and eery sound.