1-Day Itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park (See the WHOLE Park!)
My itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park has more driving than hiking.
But hear me out! It’s the perfect way to get to know the ENTIRE park, from one end to the other, from its forested lakes to the windy alpine ecosystem.
Now, if you’ve read my national park itineraries, you know I’m usually out hiking the hardest hikes. And if you know Rocky Mountain National Park, you know it’s paradise for hikers – so much that sometimes it’s hard to choose which one.
But sometimes you just have to take advantage of the amazing roads through national parks.
And RMNP has one of the best, making it one of the most drivable American national parks!
I visited RMNP during my Colorado road trip, so I was very tired from hiking for 3 weeks straight. That’s why Lala and I decided to have more of a driving tour through Rocky Mountain National Park.
And it turned out to be just what we needed!
We still got to hike quite a bit (several shorter hikes), saw the most epic views, and finished with time to spare. To end the day, we jumped in a cold river and looked for moose (meese?) at sunset, although we didn’t see any.
So, here’s every stop I made during my 1-day itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park!
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What Makes Rocky Mountain National Park Special?
Rocky Mountain National Park is like a classroom where you can learn everything about the rocky mountains.
Here comes the nerdy stuff, folks.
Like I said, RMNP is beautifully drivable.
The famous road, Trail Ridge Road, starts at about 7,500 feet in Estes Park, climbs to 12,183 feet at the top and circles back down on the other side to the forests of Grand Lake (8,500 feet).
All the way, you learn about and, best of all, EXPERIENCE, an ancient ecosystem formed by giant glaciers. This is all while you enjoy peaks, forests and lots of wildlife.
The park is home to more than 60 peaks over 12,000 feet, but none are more impressive than Long’s Peak. It’s RMNP’s only fourteener.
You get amazing views of all these peaks as you drive to the Alpine Visitor Center.
That Visitor Center is one of the best we’ve seen.
It has awesome visuals about the park and big windows to see the mountains you’re currently learning about.
On top of everything, I love just how close RMNP is to Denver. It’s an easy day trip away from the big city, which is pretty special.
Important note: Most of Trail Ridge Road is closed from mid-October to late May due to snow! The exact point changes, but it can be from as far down as Rainbow curve (east) to the Colorado River Trailhead (west).
How to Get to Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park is about 1.5 hours from Denver, 1 hour from Boulder and 10 minutes from Estes Park.
To get to the quickest entrance to the park from the east, type “Beaver Meadows Entrance Station” into your GPS and it’ll take you to RMNP’s most popular entrance.
From there, you can access Bear Lake Road and start the Trail Ridge Road up to the Alpine Visitor Center.
If you keep going west, you’ll arrive at the Kawuneeche Visitor Center and Grand Lake (which is the name of the lake and the town).
My itinerary takes you from the east to the west and back again!
The two easiest ways to get to Rocky Mountain National Park are:
- Rent a car so that you can explore the park on your own time. Like most of the American national parks, RMNP is best explored on your own. That way, you can plan an itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park and then adjust it as you go once you’re there!
Pro travel tip: Use Discover Cars to rent rental cars for your road trip, choose full coverage insurance, and opt for trusted companies like Hertz and Sixt. Book your car with Discover Cars here!
- The most stress-free way to explore RMNP is to hire a tour from Denver. The tours on Viator are highly rated, but I would never pay for a national park tour because I like my freedom.
Where to Stay for Your Rocky Mountain National Park Itinerary
Free camping near RMNP
I’m all about car camping for free all over the US. It started during my 2 years living in my SUV and I never looked back.
While there is free camping close to Rocky Mountain National Park, it’s not as ideal as it could be. The drives from the free campsites are long-ish (30+ minutes).
That being said, I’m always down to drive to save $100!
So, I camped for free at Gordon Gulch Dispersed when I visited Rocky Mountain National Park.
I actually created a map with all the free car camping sites I found and vetted during my Colorado road trip. It’s a great way to find spots to car camp for free without all the research… ‘cause I already did it! You can access it for free here:
The Most Convenient Places to Stay
If you’re looking for a more convenient place to stay near Rocky Mountain National Park, I totally understand. SUV camping is not ideal!
RMNP has surprisingly few paid camping options in the park itself. Plus, they’re hard to get sometimes, so make sure you try to make reservations way in advance.
Otherwise, have Recreation.gov notify you when there’s a cancellation so you can quickly take it. Do not – you’ll likely be racing thousands of people to get those reservations!
Finally, if you’re staying at a hotel, that’s where the real magic happens.
Here are 2 great hotel options that I would choose near Rocky Mountain National Park because they’re affordable (hard to find in Estes Park) but highly rated:
- Budget: The Maxwell Inn
- Mid-range: Riversong Inn Retreat
Estes Park is THE place to stay if you’re looking for a hotel near Rocky Mountain National Park.
Being the awesome town it is, you can’t go wrong with a hotel in Estes Park. Plus, walking around town and experiencing it’s restaurants and café’s is the best part about it.
My favorite café was Inkwell & Brew. It serves delicious coffee and has a big room upstairs where you can play board games. Doesn’t get much better than that.
And feel free to use this map to browse all the hotels and vacation rentals in the area!
The Complete Itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park
RMNP Itinerary Map
To help you get your bearings, I created a custom Google Map of my itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park. It has every stop and accommodations in this post.
This interactive map is perfect for visualizing your trip through RMNP, whether you’re driving to the Alpine Visitor Center, hiking one of the many trails or navigating to Adams Falls.
👉 Open the full map in Google Maps or see it embedded below. Tap the icon on the top left of the map to see the whole menu.
Important: this map will be WRONG most of the year because Trail Ridge Road is closed. When that road is open, the drive is much shorter on the northern side of the park instead of circling so far down south.
1. Estes Park
My Rocky Mountain National Park itinerary started at the Gordon Gulch Dispersed campground.
It was an early start to the morning to drive a whole hour to the Beaver Meadows Entrance. Like I said, the free car camping in the area is NOT ideal.
On top of that, we had to get up extra early to make it there before 9 a.m. because we didn’t have a timed entry permit.
No permit? No worries! Timed entry only applies from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from May 23 to mid-October. That means you can arrive before 9 a.m. or after 2 p.m. during those dates and drive straight in!
Even though we were on time, there was a line of cars trying to beat the timed entry deadline.
So, make sure you get there at least a half hour earlier so that you definitely get in!
We patiently waited in line while we ate our McDonald’s Sausage & Egg McMuffin from Estes Park.
But, while our morning started with McDonalds, Estes Park is an awesome town with great restaurants and coffee shops. There’s definitely better places for you to grab breakfast.
A Sausage & Egg McMuffin beats pretty much everything in price & value, though.
2. Driving the Trail Ridge Road
Our itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park really began once we entered the park.
The plan was to slowly drive all the way to the Alpine Visitor Center, stopping everywhere we could.
As it turns out, we stopped a LOT.
The view all the way up the Trail Ridge Road is stunning! And it only gets better (and more adrenaline-inducing) the higher you get.
We stopped at SO many parking lots and pull-outs on the way up the Trail Ridge Road, but these were our favorite:
- Many Parks Curve Overlook
- Rainbow Curve Overlook
- Forest Canyon Overlook
- Tundra Communities Trailhead: a short hike way up in the alpine to the Roger Toll Memorial. We saw pikas, marmots and mountains.
There are two more gorgeous lookouts after the Roger Toll Memorial: Lava Cliffs Overlook and Gore Range Overlook. If you had to choose one, choose the Gore Range Overlook.
But both are spectacular.
Then, you finally arrive at the Alpine Visitor Center, at 11,796 feet.
3. Alpine Visitor Center
This Visitor Center is beautiful and has some great visuals about the rocky mountains.
But the best of them is probably it’s big windows to the mountains.
Park rangers will often point out something interesting going on far away and allow visitors to take turns with a telescope to see things.
While we were there, they showed us some elk. We also saw a gigantic set of elk horns that had been shed days before.
If you’re lucky, you could even see moose from the Alpine Visitor Center.
4. Driving to Grand Lake
The drive on the other side of the Alpine Visitor Center (to the west entrance) isn’t as epic and craggy.
Despite that, we still enjoyed it.
Our end destination was Grand Lake – more specifically Adams Falls.
On the way, we stopped at:
- The picnic area at the Holzwarth Historic Site parking lot. It’s where we first tried peanut butter and pickle sandwiches… life changing!
- The Green Mountain Trailhead, which leads through a burned forest. Sadly, it wasn’t a very fun hike, so we turned back after about a mile.
- The Kawuneeche Visitor Center to watch the park film
5. Adams Falls & a Polar Plunge
The hike to Adams Falls isn’t long at all, but it’s beautiful.
You quickly get to the waterfall, but the real treat is a little further up the trail.
Keep walking until you reach the very top of the waterfall. The water is calm and the river is wide when you get to a clearing.
And because we were sweating in the summer heat (it was hot down there at 8,500 feet), we decided to go for a polar plunge.
We had been doing polar plunges all over Colorado during our road trip, the most recent one at Lake Dorothy. That lake had a glacier on top of it, so we thought nothing could be colder than that.
But getting into the river upstream from Adams Falls was SO cold!!
We swam to the other side, swam back, and then shivered for a good half an hour. It felt great after the hot hike.
6. Sunset Activities
Since we had started the day so early to get into the park before Timed Entry, the day was still young.
Because of that, we decided to drive all the way back to the east entrance – we didn’t want to leave yet.
So, we drove back and looked for a place to enjoy the sunset and just wait for some wildlife.
A park ranger had told us a good spot to hopefully see moose was the Sheep Lakes Information Station. We went there and saw… nothing!
Someone told us we missed seeing a moose by a few minutes!
A little disappointed, we left early and just so happened to catch the sunset and some big, gorgeous elk on the road. You never know when you’re going to have an awesome wildlife encounter!
And just like that, my itinerary for Rocky Mountain National Park came to an end. From there, I went to Denver and actually had a great time touring the city.
What I’ll Make Sure to Visit Next Time
- Bear Lake Road: one of RMNP’s most popular areas is Moraine Park and all the trails you can access along Bear Lake Road. It’s where you’ve most likely seen incredible pictures of Emerald Lake or Sprague Glacier. Next time, I’ll plan ahead and try to get the permit to see these natural wonders!
- Longs Peak: I love a big challenge, and there’s something SO special about hiking up a fourteener. Longs Peak is Rocky Mountain National Park’s tallest mountain. And it’s not just a hike… it’s actually a very technical climb with sheer drops along the trail. It’ll be quite the adventure!
- I also want to do a much longer hike next time I visit Rocky Mountain National Park, maybe even an overnight hike! From what I’ve read and the pictures I’ve seen, the best long hikes in RMNP are the Tonahutu Loop, Wind River Trail, Fern Lake and Sky Pond via Glacier Gorge Trail.
Other Stops on the Colorado Road Trip
I visited Rocky Mountain National Park at the end of my Colorado road trip.
All that was left was Denver, and I was actually surprised that I enjoyed exploring the city. After all that time in the wild mountains, I thought my standards were to high.
I have to say, that road trip was one of the best I’ve ever done – and I’ve been on a lot!
These were my favorite stops on the Colorado road trip:
- Great Sand Dunes National Park, where you can see America’s tallest sand dunes.
- The Million Dollar Highway to the gorgeous ski town of Telluride.
- Mt. Elbert, which is Colorado’s tallest mountains but a very simple hike (physically hard but not technical).
If you’re visiting Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park, I seriously encourage you to take the time and get to know even more of the rocky mountains!
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