Saturday, September 29, 2007

Rocky Mountain National Park


M and I decided late this week that we wanted to drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the colors changing in the trees. We drove a total of 280 miles today so it is not a close place to visit, but it's not too far either. The weather was a little misty and cool (in the low 50s or high 40s at some points). It even snowed on us for just a couple of minutes while we were in the park. I think we would have seen more if it had been a clear day. One of the roads through the park is already closed. It generally is closed from mid-October through June. We'll have to go next summer so we can drive all the way through the park and take some better pictures.


On our way out of the park, we finally saw a herd of elk. We had hoped to hear some bugeling. M said he heard the male bugel, but I missed it. It was really fun to see them and to be so close to them. Neither of us think we have seen elk before. As we were leaving Estes Park (which is really close to the park), the elk were all over the place. There were some just lying on the ground under a tree at a lake that was right off the highway. It would be nuts to live there and see elk in the middle of town. I was thrilled to see them and that we got some close pictures of them.

2 comments:

Bellawhoop said...

WOW! That is awesome! What a fun Saturday. The picture of the elk is beautiful. Did you get to see the colors of fall or was it too late? We went hiking today and I was hoping for some good colors, but most of what we saw was gold. It seemed a lot of the red was already on the ground. :( I think fall came early this year...

Mindy said...

We saw a lot of gold. It was beautiful. We have never seen much red or orange here...just gold. It was really nice to see it all. I just wish it hadn't been so cloudy and misty. I think we could have seen some really breathtaking views. Maybe next summer we can go back and see more than we saw this time around.