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Later, a scenic hike through the park’s central valleys will reconfirm that the best spots to get immersed in all this is away from the car crowds on miles of open trails — home to wilder, more elusive company.

“We’re probably being watched right now by mountain lions,” says Tom Dewitz, a guide with Footpaths of the World, an Estes Park outfitter (headquartered at local outdoor retailer hub The Warming House) that specializes in European-style inn-to-inn tours in and around the park and beyond. “But the biggest predators you’re likely to see today are up there,” he adds, pointing at a golden eagle hovering above.

More park residents turn up along pine cone-flecked paths between Horseshoe and Moraine Parks. Red-tailed hawks.

Cottontail rabbits and pine squirrels. And many a munching elk. Once hunted nearly to extinction here before being reintroduced, elk populations have jumped in a park that has instituted fencing areas both to prevent and study the effects of overgrazing.

Summer guests are a bit early for the park’s favorite annual elk show during early fall mating season, when droves of competing bulls turn Moraine and Horseshoe parks into a feisty symphony of bugle calls and antlered machismo. Estes Park will be hosting its 19th annual Elk Fest (September 30 – October 1), attracting thousands of visitors, a team of “Bugle Corps” volunteers, and (every year) a few folks who get a little too close to all the action.

“The general rule of thumb about being too close to an elk is this,” says Dewitz, a wellspring of all facets of park intel past and present. He lifts his thumb near a lone elk sitting regally on a hill about 100 yards from us. “If your thumb is bigger than the elk, you’re OK. If not, move back.”

We move on. Through a wonderland of geological mass movements: “Those boulders over there are called glacial erratics,” Dewitz says. And human history: “Down there was the site of an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp.” And wilderness health and hygiene tips: “Common yarrow is one of the world’s most multipurpose medicinal plants — a natural painkiller, disinfectant, and astringent,” our informed guide notes. “And this fuzzy leaf over here is mullein, which has also been called ‘cowboy’s toilet paper.’ ” Stopping for lunch in a tilted meadow sprinkled with wildflowers and stocky old pines, we soak in a southward view dominated by the park’s premier 14er, Longs Peak. Its stark summit and famous beaver-shaped southern ridge dominate a sea of lowly 13ers.

“According to Arapahoe legend, when that beaver climbs its way to the summit, the world is going to end,” Dewitz says, casually eating an apple.

Thankfully, the beaver appears to be in no great hurry today.

And neither are we as we slowly wind down toward Beaver Meadows, where people and cars reappear like the fulfillment of some other legend.