It's amazing what you don't know until you learn so. My buddy Jesse and I planned a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park for a hike and looked around. He had been there before but hadn't done much exploring either. We decided to hit up a place called Alberta Falls then continued to Mills Lake. Here is the thing, up to this point, being anything close to someone who hikes weren't me. The total hike was something like 5.5 miles, and it was in the middle of the day in the middle of summer. I didn't have any gear. I wore Vans shoes without socks, didn't have any water or snacks, no sunscreen, never hike much distance at altitude, and only brought camera gear in my backpack... yikes.

We started off our day way later than we should have, so parking was impossible. We had to take the bus into the trailhead. The trail to Alberta falls relatively short at around a mile, so it's pretty busy. There were quite a few people there, so we did our best to enjoy what we could then headed on towards Mills lake. We slowly made our way stopping more times than we would like to admit to catch our breath. The trail thinned out fairly quickly past the falls. 

The lake was quite beautiful. I'd never seen a lake like that before, nestled in the mountains like that. At one point we were by the shore cooling off, and Jesse was throwing some rocks in the water. Some guy walked by at the perfect moment and thought Jesse was going to hit him(he wasn't) and freaked out on us acting like tossing rocks was as reckless as drunk driving. 

After cooling off by the water and letting the sun get even higher and hotter, we decided to head back. It was at this point I started to realize how awesome Vans are for hiking... by the time we made it down, I had blisters the size of quarters. Despite all my ill-preparedness, I indeed was getting the bug for adventure. This was only the beginning and I would get smarter each time I went out, but I treasure these early memories.

Photography Date: 7-10-16
Writing Date: 2-19-18