My friend J is an avid hiker and is introducing me to local hikes in our area. Recently we went on a hike at Barr Lake State Park a wildlife conservation area, a bird sanctuary; and a premiere bird watching location in the Denver Metropolitan area.

J is training with her granddaughter to do a “14er/Fourteener” which in Colorado is known as climbing/hiking to the top of one of the 14,000 feet above Sea Level (4267.2 meters) mountains in Colorado. (Colorado is famous having the most in the US – 53 mountain peaks 14,000 ft or higher, Alaska comes in second with 29 peaks, California with 12, and Washington State with 2).

So hiking the 9 miles around Barr Lake State Park is a good start to prepare for a 14er.

The highest I’ve been in Colorado (or anywhere else) is 12,000 feet above Sea Level when we visited Rocky Mountain National Park. I can tell you at 12,000 ft I was really feeling the altitude! Luckily I use to live at around 6000 ft above Sea Level and now I live at around 5300 feet so my body has a little bit of altitude acclimation. I think it would take me a while to train for a 14er…

Some photos from our hike:

In the photo above you will see an example of the numerous elevated wooden bridges they have around the park so that you do not disturb the wildlife.

The park also had a bird watching area near the water (many varieties of water fowl visit the lake) with a built in set of binoculars if you did not bring your own!

It was so beautiful and peaceful on our hike with many bird sounds/songs in the background. I want to return there is John and bring a picnic and take him on a hike there!

A couple of videos if you would like to see more about what it is to hike at Barr Lake State Park.

More on our roadtrip around Northern California with our Sacramento-area based friends earlier this month. Went part of a day at the Muir Woods National Monument.

According to Wikipedia:

“Muir Woods National Monument is a United States national monument managed by the National Park Service and named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast in southwestern Marin County, California. The Monument is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and is 12 miles (19 km) north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres (224 ha),^[4] of which 240 acres (97 ha) are old-growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests,^[5] one of the few such stands remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area.“

John Muir (1838–1914) was a Scottish-Born American naturalist, author, and early advocate for the preservation of the U.S. wilderness. Known as the “Father of the National Parks,” his writings inspired the creation of the National Park System and he co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892.

(Source: Google AI)

Fortunately we began our trek through the Muir Woods at 9:00 am before the crowds arrived (by 11 am it was very crowded).

Wow these trees are old! Here is a tree cross section exhibit they had along the path of a tree that was a 1000+ years old:

We came upon an area called “Cathedral Grove” and I appreciated the signage as well as information I learned in the cafe later about this section of the Muir Woods:

Of course I couldn’t control myself, I had to let my inner “Ansel Adams” run free and snap a couple B&W photos while wandering the woods:

I took more but I won’t embarrass myself further by sharing more – ha!

We were able to get a stamp on and sticker for our National Parks Passport that we are obsessed with. It’s been fun to get the rubber stamp mark that we were there and the sticker for the national park or monument whenever we are visiting one!

Below is an example of the little passport book and the inside pages to mark that you visited a park:

Postscript

While road tripping in Northern California, I brought my English Paper Piecing (EPP) project to work on – I worked on sewing the individual hexagons together for some of my EPP rosettes (see post ScrapHappy May 2026 – Moving Along on the EPP Quilt).