End to end on Trail Ridge Road, the park is 48 miles long and we started hiking two trails on the lesser visited west side. First was Adams Falls which is a short hike from trailhead to the falls but you can continue on to a meadow with great views and if you are lucky ,and we were, you may see some wildlife.,
As we walked up the trial we were doing what hikers tend to do and that is walk with our heads down so that we watch where we are walking. Don't want to trip over a rock or something. Doing this though can result in missing a moose hanging out an arms length from the trail. We were walking, Cassie about 10 feet in front of me, and she suddenly screamed as she came face to face with a young moose. The moose wasn't nearly as afraid as Cassie and took a few slow steps away from the trail and resumed breakfast while posing for some photos for me. We had a good laugh at how loud Cassie yelled and I remarked that she had as much fear and screamed as loud when a 3 inch lizard ran past her foot at the Grand Canyon as she did for a moose.
Just up the road was the Cascade Falls trail. It was twice as long and offered the same great views and we saw even more moose, a lot of deer and a fox. Plus this warning. Luckily no lions were spotted. 
Another thing the Park Rangers warn you about are the afternoon storms that roll in nearly every day. You are told to get done your hikes by noon or be prepared to get wet or worse because there is accompanying lightning most of the time at the higher elevations. It was a beautiful day so we werent worried until with about a mile and a half left in our hike, the predicted daily storm appeared.
We did double time with the sound of thunder off in the distance and made it back to the car as the rain began. The first and only rain we had since day 1 of the trip in Massachusetts.
Thursday was the last day before we head back east. We started by driving the Trail Ridge Road across the park. It is 48 miles of climbing then decending the largest peaks on the park through a series or hairpin turns and switchbacks with no guardrails to save you from plummeting to your death. It is a white knuckle ride and luckily since we were there early there was very little traffic. which allowed us to drive as far from the cliff as possible, even if it meant driving in the on coming lane. It's really a cool road and always found on lists of the the best drives in the United States.
Near the top is the Continental Divide. The point at which to the east rivers flow to the Atlantic Ocean and to the west the rivers flow to the Pacific. We had to throw a couple snowballs too.
At nearly the highest point in the park we stopped for a hike that I had been looking forward to. It is called the Ute Trail and it is s short 4 mile, fairly level walk above the tree line through the tundra. The expansive views of the mountains were some of the best in the park.
As you can imagine, at 12000 feet it was a pretty cold and there was still some snow on the trail in spots. I 
But the snow was the least of our problems. Before we got to the halfway point, a herd of about 10 elk and deer were grazing right in the middle of the trail. We got close enough to get some pics but what appeared to be the daddy of the herd made it clear our presence was not appreciated.
Bambi's father giving us the evil eye.
We got the message and seeing as we were cold anyway, we cut the hike short content with our abbreviated walk.
With that our National Parks adventures were over. If was a great way to end it and now the only thing ahead of us was a long highway back to New Hampshire. 
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