Denise Marie Photos

FIRST. A huge thank you to this beautiful couple for one of the most incredible days of my career.
SECOND. Sit down. Because this is a long one. 😉
THIRD. It is crazy the things you can do and the places you can see in 23 hours……..

I’m going to do my absolute best to put yesterday into words but…I already know I’m going to come up short.

Ashley and Caleb picked me up from the airport at 9am and we headed straight for Estes Park. None of us really knowing just how incredible this place is. We all were so hungry and were convinced we were way too far out of town to be around any restaurants. We were so wrong.
OMG LOOK! A HERD OF ELK!
Right as we came into town, a whole herd of elk were bedded down and the bulls were fighting in the water.
You can walk right by them, in between them, it was absolutely unreal.

We grabbed some food at Claire’s, got Caleb’s hair cut by a woman named Gale who gave us a list of locations to explore, grabbed a six pack of Coors and set out to find the perfect location.
We stopped by Elkhorn Lodge, The Stanley Hotel (which is where Dumb and Dumber was filmed at!). We stopped by this beautiful trail and saw this elk with a really bizarre antler. We couldn’t quite figure out what exactly was going on until someone on Instagram said that another elk’s antler got stuck in it’s head while they were fighting! CRAZY.
We checked out the golf courses, which Gale said there would be thousands of elk there at sunset, and then had some time to kill so we decided to head up into the Rocky Mountain National Park and check it out. (Gale had also mentioned that Bear lake was frozen….which would be gorgeous for photos.)

This place is SO BEAUTIFUL you guys. Pictures do not capture it’s entire essence. The fall colors. The mountains capped with a tiny bit of snow.
We hiked a whole 256 ft to Bear Lake, which was not frozen….strike one Gale, strike one. And then just explored until we found these gorgeous yellow trees!

Yelled, laughed, skipped, and booty bumped our way around the park all.darn.day.
Our plan was to hit sunset in this beautiful meadow and then go back to the golf course to get a picture with the herd of elk before we headed back to the airport.

First golf course…no elk.
Second golf course…no elk.
Strike two Gale, strike two. 😉
BUT THEN. Caleb spotted em across the lake!
Thank goodness because it was the perfect way to end this amazing engagement session!

As we were headed to the truck we heard the alpha buck bugling and charging at the other elk with the crazy antler. Yeah, we booked our booties out of there for sure!

The entire day was too perfect for words. I love when my couples decide to make an entire day adventure out of their engagement session. It gives us a chance to get comfortable with each other and creates a once in a lifetime experience that they will remember every time they see one of these photos.

P.S. On the way to the airport Caleb said “I have to admit…I do not like photos but this was actually a lot of fun.”

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.