Rocky Mountain National Park Guide

Rocky Mountain National Park is Colorado distilled: 415 square miles of alpine tundra, glacier-carved valleys, and more than 70 peaks over 12,000 feet, with Longs Peak topping out at 14,259. The showpiece is Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in America, which climbs above 12,000 feet and runs for miles across treeless tundra where the air is thin and the marmots are fat. Below it are the postcards: Bear Lake, Emerald Lake, Dream Lake, and the meadows where hundreds of elk graze and, every fall, the bulls bugle and spar in front of a gallery of cars. It’s the most-visited place in the Colorado Rockies, and it earns it.