{"id":186,"date":"2009-08-07T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T18:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/?p=186"},"modified":"2009-08-07T11:32:40","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T18:32:40","slug":"reaping-the-rewards-hiking-to-big-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/2009\/08\/07\/reaping-the-rewards-hiking-to-big-pool\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaping the Rewards-Hiking to Big Pool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are reaping the rewards of a very wet Rocky Mountain Spring in Estes Park.  I recently hiked to the Big Pool on the North Inlet trail leaving from Grand Lake.  It was 10 miles or so round trip and the wild flowers were the best I have ever seen.\u00a0 The first mile or so of the trail is a jeep road because there is a private cabin along the trail. Once the trail narrows we saw fields of columbine in varying colors of rich periwinkle and light blues.\u00a0 On the East side I have seen clumps of columbine, but these fields were amazing.\u00a0 I also saw my first Calypso Orchid in a top secret location.\u00a0 Along the trail further in we saw red columbine.\u00a0 The vegetation was lush and we had to keep moving to ward off the mosquitoes. We stopped at Cascade Falls on our way to The Pool and took a break on the huge boulders and listened to the roar of the water.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 392px\">\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Blue Columbine\" src=\"http:\/\/alan-smith.biz\/gallery\/d\/7678-2\/IMG_0040+_Large_.JPG\" alt=\"Blue Columbine\" width=\"392\" height=\"294\" \/>\n\t<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue Columbine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 392px\">\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Calypso Orcchid\" src=\"http:\/\/alan-smith.biz\/gallery\/d\/7711-2\/IMG_0063+_Large_.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"392\" height=\"294\" \/>\n\t<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Calypso Orchid<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 336px\">\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Red Columbine\" src=\"http:\/\/alan-smith.biz\/gallery\/d\/7690-2\/IMG_0053+_Large_.JPG\" alt=\"Red Columbine\" width=\"336\" height=\"252\" \/>\n\t<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Red Columbine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 315px\">\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"lush vegetation along the trails\" src=\"http:\/\/alan-smith.biz\/gallery\/d\/7717-5\/IMG_0068+_Large_.JPG\" alt=\"Lush vegetation along the trails\" width=\"315\" height=\"420\" \/>\n\t<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lush vegetation along the trails<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 480px\">\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Cascade Falls\" src=\"http:\/\/alan-smith.biz\/gallery\/d\/7696-2\/IMG_0055+_Large_+_2_.JPG\" alt=\"Cascade Falls\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/>\n\t<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cascade Falls<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I know many visitors to our area in Estes Park choose to remain on the East side of the park, but I would highly recommend exploring the trails in the West section of Rocky Mountain National Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are reaping the rewards of a very wet Rocky Mountain Spring in Estes Park. I recently hiked to the Big Pool on the North Inlet trail leaving from Grand Lake. It was 10 miles or so round trip and the wild flowers were the best I have ever seen.\u00a0 The first mile or so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[124,127,123,10,125,270,128,126,31,18,14,44,45,30],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-around-estes-park","category-hiking","tag-big-pool","tag-calypso-orchids","tag-columbine","tag-estes-park","tag-grand-lake","tag-hiking","tag-homes-in-estes-park","tag-north-inlet-trail","tag-rmnp","tag-rocky-mountain-national-park","tag-scenery","tag-summer-vacation","tag-things-to-do","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lorismith.biz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}