This was our first stop on our cross country road trip. I was surprised how enthusiastic my dad and I got while collecting trash. We received a few comments from visitors thanking us as we bent over in parking lots near lookout spots to pick up smushed bottle caps or cigarette butts. It was interesting deciding when and where the line to retrieve trash was. The idea of this project is to help preserve the National Parks, not to harm them further. We saw a lot of substantial trash lying on edges of cliffs below that had hopefully been blown out of someones hand and not intentionally thrown. But we were out of reach to grab it ourselves and were not about to hop the fence and tumble down the mountain in order to pick up a water bottle. However, we did think about investing in an extendable claw, so if trash is just out of reach we would be able to retrieve it in the future.
At the Rocky Mountain National Park we found: bottle caps, cigarette butts, napkins, wrappers, a glass bottle, baby bottle, and the sole of a shoe.
Trash collected within the Rocky Mountain National Park