Wild Basin

Hiking today was in  the Wild Basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park.  For a different bike ride to the park we turned south in Lyons on CO 7 

for a ride through the beautiful St. Vrain's Canyon.

Once through the Canyon, 7 turns north and forms the eastern edge of  the National Park.  

We rode north for about 5 miles before we access the Wild Basin area of the park.

The Calypso Cascades trail took us through a beautiful old growth forest of spruce, pine and aspen

up 700' in elevation in 1.8 miles.  The path is  sometimes rocky inclines 

sometimes level gravel, with water running over or through the path.

Along one side St. Vrain Creek cascades downward over whitewater rapids.


Guess who showed up--Creepy Guy!

The trail crossed from one side of the creek to the other via a couple of bridges.
View from the middle of a bridge up creek

down creek.

Besides views of the rushing water, the trail treated us to other beautiful sights such as this little spruce nursery,

and boulder strewn hillsides.


Our turnaround point was this long cascade.

Other trails went on but we headed back to the Ranger Station.

 
Other interesting things we saw included a twisted pine trunk

a chipmunk looking for crumbs,

and this guy.  Everyone else on this trail carried some type of hiking equipment even if only a water bottle.  This guy appeared behind us at the top of our hike.  He was walking along with nothing but a pair of headphones around his neck and a cell phone in his hand.

After picnicking at the parking lot we continued our ride north on CO 7 for another 15 miles of beautiful scenery,

to Estes Park where we turned east on US 34 for home.

When I said that we rode the entire perimeter of the National Park on Monday (12,183 and Down 7000 blogs) I was a bit misleading.  We rode south to north east of the park, but not along the eastern edge of the park but several miles to the east.  We rode along the eastern edge today.

Louise and Duane