ESTES PARK:
Fantastic little town, typical tourist mountain town with lots of ice cream, caramel corn, taffy, T-shirt shops and some great hiking gear shops. Best to go early in the morning or later in the day, it’s a busy little main street where the shops are.
There is a river that runs through the town and a great walk way that follows the river through.
They have Lake Estes which is beautiful. You can walk/run around it (3+ miles). Or just walk to it minutes from the down town area.
The have a tram way which looks fabulous, but we didn’t get to that.
Several activity options for all ages- horseback riding, learning to rock climb, fly fishing, paddle boats, SUP, and kayaks on the lake.
Estes Park Lodging: Lots of great VRBO options, If you don’t care about staying walking distance to town I would recommend lodging near Mary’s lake, beautiful and reasonable options. Otherwise there were several other great options near the Fall River area.
We stayed at the Fall River Village https://www.fallrivervillage.com/
Great option with a pool for the kids, walking distance to down town. They have reasonable condo options. If you are willing to pay a little more I would highly recommend their newer mountain view condos, great view and space (we did not do this option, we stayed poolside which I would NOT recommend, everyone seems to swim at night when we are trying to sleep). Another good reasonable location option is at Fall River Village along the river if not in the newer Mountain View condos.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK:
Check out the cost of entering the park, as we found getting a year pass to all the parks was worth it ( I think only 90$). It can take a week or two to get the year pass so order online early if you want it before you leave.
Reservations– At the time we went you needed a reservation pass to get in which can be done at recreation.gov (or nps.gov or just google entrance pass and timed entry permit for RMNP) Its 2$ per reservation so we made one all the days we might even go. You can always go back in any time after your reservation, but they won’t let you in early. You have to have a permit for entering anytime between 6-5pm. You can go in earlier or later without a pass!
Parking– It wasn’t too busy but 10am is a busy time for family friendly hiking areas. They do have buses that go to all the major trail heads so you can park anywhere and get to where you want to go. They are currently limiting how many people can be on the bus due to covid and also require masks, the buses were open enough so you didn’t have to sit within 6ft of another person outside of your family.
Family Friendly hiking areas– (you can find these all over the internet but here are the ones we did)
Bear lake-super easy to get to, you can walk around it easily and great views
Alberta Falls from Glacier Gorge Trailhead– nice medium hike to a great waterfall
Drive Trail Ridge Road over the top and to Grand Lake– great views, great places to stop for photos and you can have a mid-day stop at Grand lake (a must do!). You can take the Old Fall River Road on the way there (it’s a one way road) then the two way road on the way back over. This filled up our whole day, we did one hike at Alluvial Fan, and walked on the trails off Chapin Creek Trailhead. The Alpine ridge trail was a bit busy midday, and is close to Chapin Creek Trail so we didn’t do it, but seems to be the one everyone else that drives up there must do. Temps obviously drop a bit up there so have at least a thin jacket for the kiddos unless you like hearing about how cold it is J. On the way back we did the Tundra Communities Trail which was great for family (pretty sure its paved the whole way).
Brad and I each did a solo hike. I did Chasm Lake which was a perfect half day hike, less than 3 hours up and 2 hrs down. This hike allows you to get high enough for amazing views, some snow, lakes and waterfalls without being gone the whole day. The last section is basically walking over large boulders once you get past the waterfall. Gains a lot of elevation quickly!
https://www.nps.gov/index.htm also has lists of easy, moderate and challenging hikes for more options!
Drive back home: we went straight through, leaving at 4am going through Nebraska and got home around 7pm. There really was no where we wanted to stop on that route and decided one long day of driving for the kids might be better than breaking it up into two. (we actually added a night in Estes when we decided to do the drive back in one day).