Glacier Basin

After loving the astronomy program we went to in June, we planned our next camping trip to coincide with Astronomy in the Park.  We spent Thursday afternoon getting ready and set up camp just in time for a neat ranger program on bird intelligence. There were some great stories in there and one Edgar Allen Poe reference that gave me the best laugh of the week. After the children were asleep, hubby and I watched the Perseid meteor shower. What a beautiful view from our campground. We found out later that if we had stayed up an hour longer it would have been 10x better. Whoops.

Can I just say, we love our pop up camping trailer?  After the program the children were cold and whining so hubby just turned on the furnace. Problem solved. Spoiled!!!  It was super cute to see how excited they were that we bought N her own sleeping bag and that they would be sharing mattresses with siblings.

Friday morning we hiked from the Fern Lake Trailhead to the Pool for the first time. It was a beautiful, mostly shady and easy hike. We finished just in time to drive to Hidden Valley and picnic before attending a Junior Ranger program called Nature Detective. After that we drove to the Alpine Visitors Center via the Old Fall River Road. What a fun journey!  One we haven't taken for 5 years.

Since hot dogs and s'mores are a requirement when camping, we cooked those over a fire before cutting out planispheres and heading to Astronomy in the Park. I must add that must husband is a genius. I forgot to pack the skewers and he made one out of a crank for the trailer, two rubber bands, and a piece of kindling. Reason #752 I'm glad I married an engineer.

K, D, and M were able to turn in their Junior Ranger Night Explorer booklets they worked so hard on this week and received their snazzy looking badges. We had a blast learning about everything from light pollution to constellations. I'm glad they had such a good time!

Saturday we learned the hard way that if you go to the Longs Peak trailhead the parking fills up half a mile down before 9:30am. So instead of hiking all the way to Eugenia Mine we allowed for the walk back down and turned around at the fork in the trail. Oh well. Chalk that up to learning you can't bring the camping trailer to such a skinny parking lot and road next time.  At least we got to meet a llama named Mr. along the way. Now that's not something we get to do every day!