In the continuing saga of last years summer vacation, we had an amazing experience on our way back from Cub Lake. But first, let me start at the beginning. When we first pulled into Estes Park, our stop after the visitor's center was a crammed local fast food establishment where we sat next to an older couple that was detailing their attempts to see the Elk in the park. They told us how they hadn't seen any in the park after a couple of days looking, but on their way back to town they had seen them. So we were primed to look for Elk ourselves, and didn't see any until we were hiking back from Cub Lake when we came across a herd in a flat area. It was really amazing how big they were and how close we were:
They didn't seem to mind us and paid little attention, although you could tell they were keeping an eye on us. It was just a treat to stand there and look and see how many there were, just munching away on the grass and the bushes, and we were telling ourselves this was the highpoint of the trip, to have just stumbled upon a herd of Elk.
And then we noticed that some were on the path in front of us, and some were on the path behind us, and lots were on the path to the one side. So we couldn't stay on the path and go either forwards or backwards, but no big deal, we were having too much fun just watching them. And then we noticed that the ones behind us were slowly moving down the path towards us, led by a big buck. And the one's in front of us, they were kind of drifting towards us with another big buck in the lead. Now I knew how Lindsay Lohan must feel, mobbed by a pack of wild beasts. The big buck next to us gave us a look like "don't even think about coming this way".
At this point the rest of the family was urging that we go around them, leaving the path and picking it up where it looped around the low hill next to us. I was all in favor of staying on the path and letting them move on, but as they gave no sign of moving on (by this point a lot were just sitting down), and the three bucks were looking decidedly unfriendly as they edged closer, we went ahead and climbed the low hill and picked up the path further on without incident. We did try to step from rock to rock to avoid any damage though.
We were pretty proud of how we "found" those Elk, although the next day we came across a smaller, no male in sight group right in Estes Park along the Fall river, just upstream from the statue in this picture where we had posed just a day before. Sometimes they aren't so elusive after all.
