More hiking and Estes Park, Colorado

Hehe, again, we woke up early to catch the sunrise but as you can see, it is pretty bright out already but not as late as the day before.

Instead of taking the shuttle to trails further away, we went to one that is about 3 mi from where we stayed. As we were hiking, we came across this herd of elk. It was a nice surprise since we were not expecting to bump into them. They were definitely much closer than the day before.

The mountain trail we went to is called the Deer Mountain. It is also a very enjoyable climb up to the top of about 10,000 ft, another 3 mile to the peak.

View from the peak...

It was also nice that there is another trail that led us back to the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center to catch the shuttle that brought us to downtown Estes Park. Although I wished that we had more time to go hiking around lakes and waterfalls, I was glad that we made a trip to downtown. It is a very cute town with lots of interesting shops that sell all kinds of stuff, like this bookstore.

Downtown is actually only 2 miles away from where we stayed but after all that hiking (about a total of 9 miles), we didn't feel like walking all the way to downtown, especially since we might have to walk back if we missed the last shuttle at 7.30pm.

As we arrived downtown, we saw a few more elks! Better still, they were right in front of us!

They doesn't seem to be bothered by the cars passing by or the bunch of people (like me) standing around them watching them eat the fresh looking grass.

We had an early dinner at an Italian restaurant - Mama Rose's, where we ordered their veal parmesan. Can't remember when was the last time I had veal but this is really good! The texture is just nice and the lack of breading enhance the taste of the meat. The picture below is half of the entree portion. It is huge! Lucky thing we didn't order two different entree! Not only that, the entree also come with garlic bread and a huge plate of salad! Wonder if people actually order entree and finish it.

Since we had plenty of time to walk around after that, we managed to catch the last shuttle back (with a little bit of power walk as we went to get ice-cream 30 minutes before the last shuttle). I was soooo tired that night that I crashed until the alarm ring the next morning at 5.45am. Yes, we did get to see the sunrises this time! Hehe...mission accomplished!