20230912: Colorado Trip – RMNP Day 3

Our Excursion: 20230912: Colorado Trip – RMNP Day 3 (Part of trip: )
Date of our excursion: 2023-09-12
Location: Rocky Mountain National Park - Copeland Falls, Calypso Cascades, Ouzel Falls
Mileage: 6.97

Our Planned Itinerary: Breakfast at the Way Finder Drive to Wild Basin Gag in the grossest toilets ever Hike up to Copeland Falls, Calypso Cascades, and Ouzel Falls Snacks at the picnic table Drive back to Denver Relax on the deck Eat some butter chicken and rice

Travelers on this Excursion:

We hit some cool places.

Continents: North America Countries: US States/Provinces/Cantons/Regions: Colorado Cities/Villages/Towns: Rocky Mountain National Park

Some featured areas we visited:

Some points of interest we hit:

Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Rocky Mountain National Park – Copeland Falls, Calypso Cascades, Ouzel Falls

This is the last day in Rocky Mountain National Park. So sad; but it’s been great fun! This morning the skies are clear and we finally have a great view of the mountains over the river bend from our deck. BEAUTIFUL! Can’t stay staring at his forever as we have more eating and hiking plans today. We pack up and head off.

First stop after checking out is breakfast, of course! We decide that the Wayfinder had good breakfast yesterday so we will try it again today. We help ourselves to more chocolate mints both before and after breakfast. We order a bunch of crazy food and coffee. It is good, but I think the good cook was working yesterday and they forgot to keep our food hot while Dan’s omelet was cooking (his was the only hot meal). Oh well, the taste was still good, even though lukewarm. More mints on the way out and it is off to Wild Basin.

The road to the Wild Basin entrance went past Lake Mary Dam and Long’s Peak. We contemplated hiking Long’s Peak but decided to heed the warnings about the dangers and the multiple deaths per year. We prefer to meander up and down trails with low chance of damaging anything.

Finally we reached Wild Basin and headed to the parking lot. We found a VIP parking spot surrounded by trees and then headed for the trailhead. Well, we just drank a lot of water at breakfast so we thought it was smart to use the restrooms in the parking lot rather than having to jump in a waterfall. Looking back, the waterfall might have been a better idea. I have smelled and seen a lot of incredibly gross outhouse and toilets in my life, but this was most definitely the grossest, foulest, most gag inducing toilet room I have ever experienced. The smell when you walk in made each of us gag and start to vomit. The ammonia and waste smells mingled and made you delirious. The fly hordes were divebombing you (from ALL angles) at every moment of this fun experience. No amount of nose covering or breath holding helped. By the end of the toilet trip, you were gagging, staggering, and struggling to breathe. The park service kindly provided hand sanitizer in the rooms, however, you were fortunate if you were still coherent enough with enough brain function left to be able to breathe, use sanitizer, and open the door beforeexpiring. I know, in my experience, I had to choose between sanitizing my hands and buttoning my pants or stumbling to the door, opening the door, and gasping for some clean life-recovering oxygen. Obviously, since I’m not dead in an outhouse, I chose the oxygen option. We pack thoroughly so I knew someone would have some sanitizer we could bathe in far away from the vile toilets.

After that adventure, we headed up the trail after chatting with the park volunteer about the trail and waterfalls. The trail, waterfalls, and views were amazing! We again found some stairs and continued our Manitou training. Maybe we’ll be ready for that by next week!

First we saw upper and lower Copeland Falls. Took some pictures and headed to the next stop. We walked by the river and under trees for most of this trail so it was very pleasant. We also didn’t have any rain on this hike – the day was beautiful!

Calypso Cascades was next. Beautiful also! Then we headed the .9 miles and 200 ft of elevation gain to Ouzel Falls. We realized that the 200 ft of elevation was overall elevation gain but the trail actually had a bunch of elevation loss and elevation gains which made it more strenuous than just 200 ft. We made it to Ouzel Falls! The waterfall was nice. We again had some chunky chipmunk friends that thought our food smelled tasty. What does that say about our food? The chipmunks were bold but they couldn’t sneak off with any of our food. Now that lunch was over for us and nonexistent for the chipmunks, we headed back down the trail. This portion of the hike took less time and effort than the ascent, but still had great views.

We are heading from the park back to the house so unfortunately, we needed to use the gross toilets again. They were still gross although someone may have tried to clean them because a sanitizer was in a different spot. One of the bathrooms was locked so we were worried someone succumbed to the stench and fumes. Mom tried to rub scents and oils in and around her nose and cover her nose with a cloth. That was a worthy endeavor but alas was not successful. Still, putrefying smells permeated the scents and cloth.

We headed back to Denver area to continue our adventure and give a few days of rest to aching legs and lungs. The majority of the relaxation time is spent on the roof deck basking in the breeze.

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Here's a mapped route!

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Here are some of our pics...

Click the button to see pics here. This pulls from google photos so it is a bit slow. It should load eventually.