A Guide to Visiting Rocky Mountain National Park from Denver, Colorado

If you visit Colorado for one thing, it must be to see the famous Rocky Mountain National Park! Although it’s about an hour and a half from Denver, visiting this National Park was the highlight of our trip. We made a day trip out of it and would love to come back and explore more trails!

A Beautiful Drive and Breakfast

We enjoyed the scenic view on the drive from Denver to Estes Park, where Rocky Mountain National Park is located. You’ll pass by Estes Lake on the way, which was such a beautiful sight!

We stopped at Notchtop Cafe for breakfast, which is 10 minutes away from the park. Notchtop is the only cafe in Estes Park that has an in-house bakery that produce chemical and preservative-free baked goods. All of their food is made from scratch and their service is great! If you want to take a look at their menu and hundreds of great reviews on Trip Advisor and Yelp, check out their website.

We fueled up for our day of hiking with a delicious breakfast, stopped at Safeway next door for some water and snacks for our hike (I am always thinking about my next meal!), and made our way to the park. On the way to Rocky Mountain National Park you drive through downtown Estes Park which has a lot of cute little shops, restaurants and breweries.

Arriving the Park

Once you arrive the park, you drive a mile past the Beaver Meadow Visitor Center to show your reservation time and receive a map of the trails. This is also a good time to ask the park rangers at the booth for any tips or questions you may have.

At the time we planned our trip there was a reservation requirement due to Covid-19. If you are planning to visit while the pandemic is still prevalent I suggest you make you reservation before you arrive Colorado. If you don’t, all of the time slots might be taken for the day you want to visit the park! Our reservation was from 12pm-2pm and we were allowed to enter the park within that timeframe. We could stay as long as we wanted to after that timeframe, within the park’s operating hours.

Parking

If you have an early reservation and arrive fairly early, you may get lucky finding a parking spot in the Bear Lake parking lot. (if that’s where you want to start your hike). When we arrived it was full, so we turned around and used the Park and Ride area. The Park and Ride area has a lot of parking and you just have to wait for the free bus to come and give you a ride to whichever trail you want to start at.

We stood in line for the Bear Lake Route, which starts at the Park and Ride and makes stops at: Bierstadt Lake Trailhead, Glacier Gorge Trailhead, and then Bear Lake Trailhead. (We saw a group of moose on the bus drive and had to stop for them!)

If you are looking to hike on different trails, there is also a bus for the Moraine Park Route. For more information on Rocky Mountain National Park bus routes, click here.

Recommended Hikes

We took the Bear Lake Route shuttle to Bear Lake Trailhead, where we began our hike to Emerald Lake (about 3.5 miles roundtrip). When hiking Bear to Emerald, you pass 2 lakes before arriving to the final lake; Nymph Lake is first, then Dream Lake, and then finally Emerald Lake! All 3 lakes were absolutely beautiful, but my favorite was Dream Lake because of the gorgeous mountain views in the back.

Once we arrived back at the Bear Lake trailhead, we decided to hike to Alberta Falls (about 1.8 miles roundtrip). We were pretty tired after that!

Rocky Mountain National Park has many hikes based on your fitness level and comfort. We could’ve spent multiple days checking out different hikes, but only having one day, we chose the above hikes and really enjoyed them.

Other Tips!

At the time of this writing, Beaver Meadows Visitor Center is operating out of a temporary trailer located in front of the visitor center building due to Covid-19. Park Rangers are available to assist visitors here, and the Rocky Mountain Conservancy Nature Store is located here as well. The store has some cool souvenirs to take home; I purchased a shirt to commemorate our fun trip.

You are not allowed to feed the wildlife, but note that a lot of the chipmunks are not afraid of humans because many people break this rule. If you sit down to eat lunch or open a granola bar, make sure the chipmunks don’t snatch it!

For more information on the park, including potential closures, safety, accessibility and other important information, please check out the National Park Service website.

Rocky Mountain National Park really impressed me and I only saw a fraction of it. I recommend visiting if you’re in Colorado – even if you have to drive a bit to get there, every drive in this state seems to be a scenic one! I promise it’ll be worth it!

Have you ever visited Rocky Mountain National Park? If so, let me know your favorite hike in the comments! If you’re looking for other things to do in Colorado, specifically Denver, please check out my other posts!