Healthy Traveling: Snow Shoeing in Denver

This past weekend I was in Denver for a college reunion. In college, me and my 3 BFFs called ourselves the Core Four. We haven't seen each other in years all together so we decided to plan a trip somewhere and chose Denver as Karen just moved there in July. 

Myself, Erin and Allie flew in and landed Thursday night in Denver. We somehow all found flights landing within 15 min of each other. We waited for my luggage then went off to get our rental car for the weekend. 
TIP: Denver's airport is far from downtown and in the middle of nowhere. It will take you almost an hour from the time you get off the plane, take the train to baggage claim, take the shuttle to the rental car place, get your car and get on the main highway. 

We used Enterprise and it was so simple. We had a kiosk and everything was done electronically. It was the easiest and most painless rental car pickup I've ever had and everyone was so polite. We even got to pick our car: a red Kio soul. We headed to Karen's and spent an hour or so catching up before heading to bed. 

Bear Lake frozen over

Friday we got up and had breakfast burritos and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park to go snow shoeing. Snow shoeing is basically hiking but through snow. You where snow boots with these things that look like tennis rackets on your feet. They help you be able to grip the snow without sinking in. 

We got a little lost heading there and grabbed some Starbucks as a pick me up. We went to rent our gear and head up the mountain. Driving there was just gorgeous. So much scenery and just beauty everywhere. We made it to the National Park and had about 15 min before getting to our trail. In the meantime we saw people drive like crazy (backing up, slowing down, parking around blind corners) all to get pics of animals! We finally made it and got ready. 

the snow storm is starting

As you may know, I'm not the biggest outdoorsy person and have been skiing only once and almost broke my leg doing it. But I'm always looking for new experiences and figured snow shoeing would be a good one. We had a guy tell us we wouldn't need our snow shoes-glad we didn't listen to him because we definitely did! We saw people all around us in regular shoes (even a dude in Sandals!!) sinking into the snow everywhere. 

snow storm!!!

The views were spectacular and I've never seen a frozen lake before. It was also a good workout with the heavy boots on our feet and also the elevation. We started at about 9450 feet and went up to 9950 feet (it's crazy to think that 50 more feet and we would be at the height of when you are on an airplane you can turn on portable electronic devices) and even though it was just 509 feet we started off with no precipitation and in the middle had a gorgeous snowfall and at the end before we came back down were in a snowstorm! 

Nymph Lake that we saw in the crazy snow

I would highly recommend snow shoeing as it was active but not too strenuous. 

Have you ever gone snow shoeing before? 

frozen lake! (it reminded me of Frozen haha)