Today, Justin decided to get up and run 2 miles. I decided not to go because I knew we would be getting enough exercise on the mountain hiking today. Then we decided to go back to one of our favorite places for breakfast, The Egg and I. It was super yummy, again. They have the best ranch potatoes. It was so good that we got some of them to go. That is what we will make breakfast with tomorrow.
After breakfast, we headed into Rocky Mountain National Forest. We decided to see Alberta falls, so we had to go to the Glacier Gorge trail head. However, the parking lot was full. Then we went to the Bear Lake trailhead. 
The ranger at the entrance told us this parking lot was also full. We had to go thru it to turn around. As we were driving out, a car left. Bear lake trailhead isn’t exactly where I wanted to start, but it all goes to the same place.
So we headed out toward Alberta Falls. The trail was not as challenging as we would have liked. It was very well marked and flat. 
Once we began hearing running water, we got off the trail and headed toward it. We found a nice little creek (Glacier Creek). We followed it along a sloped and rocky trail until we came to Alberta Falls. Alberta falls is a 25ft cascade in Glacier Creek. We hung out there for a while and took some pictures. 
Then we headed out to find the original trail and see where it takes us. We were trying to make a big loop back to Bear Lake trailhead so we didn’t have to double back on any trails. We found tons of great scenery. It seemed like no matter where we went, we were going up. 
This trail became more technical. There were more rocks and the trail was narrower. If you fell over you’d probably fall to your death. Once we got to “The Loch”, we did a map check. Well, somewhere we had chosen the wrong path. We had to backtrack from the Loch and head toward Bear Lake via an unimproved trail.
However, I believe if we hadn’t gotten lost we would not have seen some really great views. Like in this picture. Behind us in the Chaos Canyon Cascades Once we got on the right trail it was more uphill, rock climbing, and root steps. There were tons of varmints on these trails. We saw lots of squirrels, chipmunks, a woodpecker, and another marmot. 
We finally made out way back to the Bear lake trailhead. I was ready to get my shoes off. We had hiked 7.5 miles in almost 5 hours and reached a max elevation of approximately 10,200 ft. I had originally estimated a 4 mile hike. We were both extremely dirty, so we headed back to the cabin to clean up for dinner.
Tonight we went downtown to Poppy’s. It is a pizza joint in an outdoor square. There was a lady playing her guitar and singing in the mini amphitheater. The pizza at Poppy’s was good. 
However, we have left overs. Now we have BBQ left overs and Pizza left overs and we leave Monday morning. Then Justin and I took a walk on the river walk. It was a gorgeous night. We decided to go to the bakery that I have been wanting to go to. I got cinnamon apple pie and Justin got Key Lime. Mine was good. It would have been better if it were warm. The apples were sliced really thin, just how I like them. Then we went to Starbucks and got something to drink so we would sit out on their patio tables.
That completed day 5. Not sure what we are doing tomorrow. I know we want to go into town and check out this Heritage festival. We need to pick up our souvenirs that we’ve been scouting out all week. There are some museums I want to check out. We still want to go on the aerial tramway.
I have been uploading all our vacation photos to my Picasa account. That means if you want to see the entire trip, click on My Photos on the right hand side of the page.
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