Grand Lake, USA

One of my favorite national parks. We visited here in early September - it was still warm during the daytime althouhg higher altitudes were almost freezing cold. The views were magnificient. The waters are clear and sparkle in the sun, mountains are majestetic, and elks and deer graze peacefully on the meadows.
The park has many cleary marked trails. It's best to reserve plenty of time here. My absolute favorite is the Chapin Trail up to the Mount Chapin.

Bear Lake is only 100 meters or so from the parking place and thus packed with people. It is, however, an excellent starting point, from which many trails begin. The lake itself is nice: the surroundings are handsome and the waters are clear. We continued from Bear Lake to the glacier lakes upper in the mountains... Another good option could have been to go to the Flattop Mountain - maybe next time...

If you're wanting a hike that isn't QUITE as busy, head to Wild Basin, in the southeast part of the park. The hike to Ouzel Falls is one of my favorites. Along the way you'll come to Calypso Cascade, which is worth the price of admission to the park.

This small tourist town is a gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park. The town center is small and filled with shops selling outdoors equipment. We didn't spend much time in the town though - the RMNP is so close that we went there for the daylight hours. ... p.s. the local micro brewery's beer is ok ;-)

The Stanley Hotel is old and charming. It's known as being "The Shining" hotel - the hotel supposedly inspired Steven King's book and later the film. The hotel building is magnificient wooden structure painted white. We got a room facing south and thus had a great view to the Rocky Mountains. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

User attached a link to stanleyhotel.com

A clean motel just outside the Rocky Mountain National Park. Our room was nice and spacious. Altogether the motel seemed to be equipped for the national park visitors, i.e. hikers and trekkers: location was good, rooms had refridgerators, a big map of the trails was on the room wall, ... Our room was on the upper row and the view to the mountain was - again - magnificient.

User attached a link to alpinetrailridgeinn.com

The town seems to live on a distinctive rhythm along with its adventurous visitors. People wake up early to get to the Rocky Mountain National Park in time and most of the shops close already at 5pm and at 9pm the town is very quiet. This rhythm makes sense though because the best hiking hours in RMNP are in the morning: the probability of thunder storms is high in the afternoon and especially in the higher altitudes the weather can change rapidly (as we experienced today when the hail storm set in in the middle of a sunny day...)

The Mount Chapin trail was my favorite hike in the RMNP. The trail begins below the treeline but quite soon rises above the trees. The grand view over the mountain range makes you feel very small as you see the forests and valleys and mountains continuing in front of you for miles and miles. We saw only very few other people on the trail, but the more deer and elks and even our first pica's! :-) The other easy-to-reach-by-car trails were definitely more crowded.
Also this trail is clearly marked and quite easy to walk. It'll get windy and quite cold above the treeline and it's said that the afternoon thunderstorms are common.

We took the Deer Mountain trail on the last hiking day at the Rockies. The trail is one of the easier ones and not too long (or interesting, for that matter), but it's very conveniently located by the road going through the Rocky Mountain National Park . The path is easy to tread and there are many good spots to sit down for a while and enjoy the views over the valley and watch the Stellar Jay's fly.

The Nymph Lake was the second glacier lake on our hike starting uphill from the Bear Lake. The lake is actually more like a pond: shallow and small and in many places covered with water-lilyes (or similar).
I took the photo after a long hike from the lake just to show that That's where we came from! The lake in the photo is Nymph Lake from which our trail continued upwards to left towards the Dream Lake.