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Rockies Vacation - Day 2

After another late breakfast, we headed for Colorado and some real mountain hiking. As we drove through the North Platte River Valley, we began to understand not only the hardships the pioneers must have faced, but also the boredom of trekking through the same monotonous landscape (beautiful, but monotonous) day in and day out. You know how early movies or cheesy tv commercials simulate motion by painting a few trees and clouds on a long canvas that's looped around a reel and run backwards while actors jog in place in the foreground? Well, you could do the same thing to simulate the I-25 landscape by painting sagebrush and cows and the occasional "Fireworks!" billboard with a few mountains and buttes in the distance. And then let the reel turn for a few hours.

We finally arrived in Fort Collins, CO, turned off the highway and headed up State Route 14 through Poudre Canyon. This was a cool drive. It was a long and winding road between steep canyon walls and we were beginning to doubt that we would ever get to the trailhead we were aiming for, but after an hour we crossed the Continental Divide (woohoo!) and turned onto the narrow dirt road toward the Lake Agnes trailhead. Now, if I had not grown up in a place like Potter County, I might have been daunted taking our Chevy Malibu rental up this "road" to the trailhead. Instead, we arrived without incident, parked between an SUV and a Jeep, opened the car doors and beheld a beautiful Alpine valley ringed with snow-capped mountains.

After a potty break in the aromatic outhouse, we began hiking up the trail. Then I had to stop. Of course, the air was thin, but I was surprised by how winded I was after only a few hundred yards of brisk walking. So we resumed walking at a more leisurely and comfortable pace up a fairly steep but well-maintained path until we came over a ridge and beheld beautiful Lake Agnes.

This crystal clear mountain lake was the perfect introduction to the Rocky Mountains for us. Surrounded by Mt. Richtofen, Mt. Mahler, and the Nohku Crags, with a small, tree-covered rock island in the center, this was the epitome of a secluded Alpine lake. We wandered around the lake while I snapped B&W pictures from every angle. Unfortunately, like idiots, we'd (that would be me, actually) left the digital camera in the car, so I don't have any pictures to post yet. Our hike here only left us aching for more.