Guess how many mountain lakes we hiked by today!?!

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

July 21, 2023

We were up at 4:45 this morning, and our early morning wake-up was blessed with a nice assortment of animal sightings. It also got us a good parking spot at the Lewis Lake trail head. We have seen this area jammed with cars, including hikers parked along the road up to a half-mile past the lake. But today our 7:00 a.m. hike started right at the trail head because we were so early. We started the hike along Lewis Lake, so we were already tallying up one lake that we hiked beside today.

We were hiking away from Medicine Bow Peak, and the lakes we have already seen or kayaked. Do you want to guess how many mountain lakes we hiked by today? Get a number in your mind, then come along to see if your guess is right.

Here's a hint: Most of the time our hikes include just one lake. We've been known to go on a 15-mile hike just to see one mountain lake. But here was Mark at 8:00, standing beside our second lake. It was still cold (as you can see that Mark was wearing his normal July wardrobe of a coat and gloves). 

There was another lake in the background, but we were actually taking a picture of the trees. This hike started at an elevation of 10,780 feet, and we're hiking up even higher. Few trees can grow at that high elevation. But we were in the middle of a grove of Engelmann spruce trees. Denisa wanted to take a picture of an Engelman hanging out with the Engelmanns.

That looks like another lake we were coming to, as we were hiking through the snow.

There are several forest service campgrounds in this area, but they don't have any hook-ups or amenities. So we found quite a few tents taking advantage of the free camping scattered along this trail. Instead of going to the trouble of making a reservation and paying $10 per night to stay in the campground, you can pitch a tent for free. That's what this group did. We watched as they appeared to be doing some kind of religious ceremony led by the guy in the white robe--who changed into a black robe in the middle of the ceremony.

It was 8:22 a.m., and Mark still had on his coat and gloves. He was also standing by another lake. Even though not all of the lakes are named, we think this was Lost Lake. You can quit looking for it, because we have found it.

While Denisa loves finding pretty lakes, she also likes finding pretty wildflowers--like these pretty pink paintbrushes.

While we continue hiking, it's time for some wildflower education. We learned this by reading a forest service sign, and found it fascinating. It's hard to tell the size of this clump of flowers, but the whole thing was smaller than the palm of a hand. This was moss campion, and it grows only in alpine areas at very high elevations. Trees and flowers grow slowly up here, and are small in size. This plant will grow around one-half inch in five years. It blooms profusely only after twenty years. A plant this large may be close to one hundred years old.

The alpine sunflower has an unusually large bloom for the alpine, where the plants are smaller than usual. This plant grows only green leaves for the first two to twenty years. It stores up energy until it finally will bloom only once, and then dies after setting seed.

Our trail not only went through the wildflowers, but it also went through large patches of snow. The campgrounds and trails in this area are only open for 8-10 weeks out of the year. The roads are covered with snow until mid-July, and then it starts snowing again in September. This area only opened up a week before we arrived, and there was still plenty of snow on the trail. There is a very narrow window of opportunity to enjoy God's wonders here.

We found another mountain lake. Each one was perfectly clear so we could see the rocks all the way to the bottom.

It was finally warm enough to shed our coats, and we were still finding lakes. We have definitely wandered into lots of God's wonders today.

We didn't take the time or energy to walk beside each of the lakes we found.

At 9:30, we finally arrived at the destination of this hike--West Glacier Lake. All of these lakes were formed by a slow-moving glacier that dug out divots in the rock as it advanced across the plains. Some of the lakes still have hanging glaciers of permanent snow.

If you hike to West Glacier Lake, you might as well hike a little further to East Glacier Lake . . .

as well as another lake in the neighborhood.

Then we decided to extend the hike another mile so we could see one of the biggest in the area--Brooklyn Lake. With a campground and bathrooms, this is a destination for campers in the area. We were shopping for a place to stay for our next trip to the Snowy Mountains.

While we were hanging out in the campground, we saw this little chipmunk eating lunch. That reminded us that it was time for our lunch too, and we're more than four miles away from home. So we headed back on the trail.

We were hiking back when some fellow hikers pointed out a rock quarry in the distance. It was here that the green-colored stones were quarried to build a bank in Fort Collins many years ago. Some of the green-colored stones were scattered around the trail, and we found that they were the same shade as Mark's shirt.

It was also on this long hike back to the trail head that Denisa got the idea to count the lakes we passed. It had seemed like we saw a lot this morning, but they all blurred together until we started counting on the way back.

A few of them had names, but most we had no clue of their identity. We decided that we could name most of them "God's wonders" because we were wandering God's wonders on this hike.

We thought that many of these lakes would be great to kayak--if we wanted to carry our inflatable boat a couple miles.

As we got closer to our parking lot, the mountains started looking familiar. We saw pointy Sugarloaf Mountain on the left, and the massive Medicine Bow Peak on the right.

Likewise, that would be Lewis Lake under Sugarloaf Mountain. That's where we started! We had hiked 8.4 miles in the last five hours, with an elevation change of over 1,000 feet.

So how many mountain lakes did we hike by? Five? Ten? A dozen? We never remember seeing this many mountain lakes in one day! If you guessed 22 lakes at the beginning of the blog, we are astounded at your accuracy. We also think that you might have cheated somehow. We counted an unexpectedly large number--22 lakes in our hike back to the pickup! We're pretty sure that was some kind of record for us.