Our late morning officially began around 10:30 a.m., when we put in our names at Snooze, a trendy brunch spot with a location on Pearl Street in Boulder, highly recommended by Austin. Food was pretty good but service was borderline subpar.
Emmie and I before brunch at Snooze.
We next drove to Rocky Mountain National Park, the entrance to which was about 45 minutes from Boulder. We followed the Highway 34 “Trail Ridge Road” for about 25 miles to the continental divide, and then turned around and made the same trip back.
Amanda and kids in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Though Emmie was asleep, we pulled over on our return trip to take Noah to see an elk.
There really is an elk in the distant background.
For dinner, we ate at Cheesy Lee’s Pizza, located inside an 1874 dining room within Elkhorn Lodge outside Estes Park. The pizza was very good; my favorite from the trip. Noah ate three breadsticks with tons of added parmesan cheese. We shopped in Estes Park for the better part of an hour, though only purchased a t-shirt for Noah and handful of taffy pieces to share.
The drive to the hotel was entirely in the dark, mostly on two-lane roads, but uneventful and pleasant with Noah and Emmie sleeping much of the way.