ESTES PARK 2019 Day Three - Town trip, Gem Lake and Password

Even though we thought we should get up early to hike due to the crowds in the park, with teenagers we thought it would be a battle.  So every morning we had a nice big relaxing breakfast.  My brother makes incredible coffee.

Some of us went into town to get fishing licenses.  The rest of us went on yet another grocery store trip.  The mountains make us HANGRY!

Finally our first hike - with possible weather approaching.  Gem Lake is on the very edge of RMNP but technically still in the town of Estes Park.  I'm not sure why we had not read about it before.  Cade and Philip were hoping to fish at the Lake, even though it looked tiny on the trail map.

When we were driving to trailhead, Joel thought the clouds over the mountain made it look like a volcano!

We were pleased to see the parking lot at the trailhead wasn't full.  It felt wonderful to hike, but we had to do lots of stopping and resting.  The altitude was kicking some of our booties.

Stopped to get a snack and Cade said his asthma was bothering him.  So he and Phil turned around to try to fish at Lake Estes.  We pressed on, watching the sky for signs of bad weather.

We reached the beautiful view of all of Estes Park and took amazing pictures.

Then we started to climb again, and a HUGE clap of thunder stopped us in our tracks.  We saw a cloud approaching us.  All of us tried to get a signal to see the radar but no luck.  We did pull up that the lightning was 13 miles away.  So we turned back (sadly).

We were making good time, the clouds were darkening on us and it started to rain here and there.  All of a sudden I had heart flutters.  They were so bad I had to stop even though it had started raining hard.  We all put on our waterproof wear and kept going.  Of course then the sun came out and we were sweltering by the time we got to the car.  I still felt a little woozy so Jav let me and the kids in while he was putting all our gear in the back.  Macy said she saw lightning then we all heard The BIGGEST CLAP of thunder ever and it made the hair on our necks stand up.  We were all so glad to be grounded in our car.

We made a plan to do another easy hike the next day to see if the flutters showed up again.  But I was pretty bummed.  It was a scary feeling.

Oh a happier note, we finally saw some elk on the way home, all female.

Got back and started dinner :  Beef and chicken tacos, rice and beans, fruit salad.  Delicious!

Then we played Password after dinner.  With my grandparents' actual game from the 50's.  You can really only play with 4 people at a time, so we switched out people every once in awhile so everyone could play.  The kids had a great time playing, and so did all the adults.  And as what usually happens when we all get together, the laughter was abundant and wonderful.

Cade's deep in thought!  The Thinker 😹

Laughter, the BEST MEDICINE!

Joel's happy he's on a team with Mamaw, the smartest
person in the room!  After this we realized he could
handle playing by himself and he did really well!

We all decided we need a muzzle for Poppy!

At one point while waiting for Jav to either guess the word or give me a clue (I can't remember now), I made the comment:  "I might as well go to bed as exciting as this is."
Poppy guffawed and said,  "Jav you really need to up your game!"
followed by Macy squirming and saying she wanted to leave the room, and something about trading in her family, Gabriel getting the gist of it and looking really uncomfortable, the rest of us laughing hysterically and Joel wondering what was so funny.

I love my crazy inappropriate family!