In November of last year, we took a long weekend trip to Colorado. It wasn't a vacation, but we tacked on an extra day to our itinerary to allow us to spend a day seeing something new. That something new was supposed to be Rocky Mountain National Park. Frontier Airlines, however, had other ideas, and in what has to be one of the top two miscommunication experiences I've ever had with an airline, we never made it to our extra day. Rocky Mountain would have to wait.
So will Frontier for my business any time soon. Possibly forever.
As it turns out, the Park didn't have to wait long. Less than nine months later, we took in what we missed the first time. And quite honestly, we probably did it way better than we would have done in November. We used Rocky Mountain National Park as our anchor on this trip (and I mean that in only positive terms). It served as a reason to fly into and out of Denver and it ended our trip with what we hoped would be a "saved the best for last" type deal. Our hopes were correct.
Our plan for Rocky Mountain National Park was to start in the southwest corner of the Park near Grand Lake and drive the entirety of the length of Trail Ridge Road through the mountains to over 12,000 feet and end up at Estes Park just outside the northeast corner of the Park. With a few side trips and what we hoped would be many, many stops, we figured that would take us about all day. Now, because we are more than a little obsessed with seeing bighorn sheep in the wild, we planned a second morning in the Park around Bighorn Mountain and Sheep Lakes, hoping that those spots would live up to their names and get us a look at some of these animals just after dawn on the day we flew home.
I don't know what it is about bighorn sheep. I mean they are just sheep with big, curly horns. But there is something there. Maybe my patronus is a bighorn sheep or something.
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| The Colorado River, Rocky Mountain National Park. |
Part of the attraction of Rocky Mountain was the landscape. Being able to drive through those peaks capped with snow while just days earlier having hiked under brutal 100 degree blazing sun was really appealing. I was really looking forward to driving up the side of a mountain likely with a steep drop-off on the side of the unprotected road (that part was true) and seeing for miles and miles over mountains.
I was also eager to see more of the Colorado River after having driven alongside it and over it and seen it wind its way as far as Canyonlands National Park. I imagined where we'd be driving that the Colorado would be much, much smaller both in width and depth. That part was particularly true. The river in Rocky Mountain looks nothing like it does at Canyonlands. It's peaceful and slow, winding its way through a bucolic setting looking way clearer and fresher than it does downstream. Or downriver I guess.
All of those hopes here came true. The mountains were amazing and seeing the Colorado close to its source knowing what it would be come later was just what I wanted to see. The difference is so striking. It seems so young at its source.
All of that was fine and good and amazing and wonderful and whatever else you can say about that sort of nature. But what we really wanted out of Rocky Mountain was to see some wildlife. And not just some, like a lot. I mean, why not aim high, right? No bison or wolves or grizzlies in the Park but there are black bears, elk, moose and (of course) the coveted bighorn sheep. Our plan was to see all of these "big four" (that's our term, not anything official). No idea how we'd do it except for that whole Bighorn Mountain and Sheep Lakes thing but we were determined to dream here.
But before we get to all that, let's talk tundra and the rodent "big four" (again, our term).
One of the biggest surprises for me was that part of Rocky Mountain National Park contains significant areas of alpine tundra, areas above the treeline where the only plant life growing is moss and lichen and smaller greenery. There's no better place to see this sort of an environment in a National Park because you can climb higher (climb here means "drive"; there are actually higher peaks in other parks) in Rocky Mountain than any other Park in the country. And there are a ton of areas that look just like the picture above, barren rocky landscapes with anything that's growing really low to the ground to avoid the wind.
You might think that these areas would be devoid of other life. We were up there in late June and there was still a ton of snow on the ground. You'd be wrong to think that. We found plenty of marmots and pika, two of the four rodents we found in many, many spots while driving around on our day plus there. We saw one or two marmots a couple of years ago up at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon but these fat ground squirrels were all over the tundra area.
Keep an eye on marmots by the way; apparently they like to eat radiator hoses and wiring in car engines.
Scattered among the marmots were the pika, small rodents that look sort of like a cross between a rabbit and a hamster. Together with the ground squirrels we saw all over the lower elevations (no, it's not a chipmunk...) and the Utah prairie dogs we saw in some of the prairie (duh...) areas, I'm labeling these four rodents as the rodent "big four". They are presented below for your viewing pleasure.
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| Clockwise from top left: marmot, pika, Utah prairie dog, ground squirrel. |
Mountains. River. Rodents. Tundra. All well and good. Let's get to the good stuff. And no need to be coy here but we got good to great looks at every species we hoped to see. Honestly, we really couldn't have hoped for a better wildlife experience at Rocky Mountain, despite how it may have seemed at one or two spots in our drive. This was just an awesome experience. Let's go in the order we saw each species.
Moose
When I wrote earlier in this post that we had no idea how we'd see all the animals we wanted to see, that wasn't quite true. We did have some sort of plan or insider tips for some species. On the moose front, the Park website suggested we look for these big deer along the Colorado River on the west side of the Park. Noted. We also knew that moose are crepuscular, meaning they tend to be active at the beginning of the day and towards the end of the day. We'd need an early start, which is why we chose to stay close to the southwest entrance of the Park. We made it there by just after 6 a.m.
If you drove start to finish at the speed limit through Rocky Mountain National Park I'm guessing you could do the whole thing in about an hour and a half, assuming there were no slower cars on the road holding you up. I'm also pretty certain you wouldn't see much in the way of larger wildlife. You have to get off the main road and search. While we didn't know this for sure when we entered the Park, we guessed pretty quickly and took the first left we saw just a little bit after passing the Grand Lake Entrance Station. We were not the first ones there, although we didn't see anyone looking at the moose lying down in the field to the left of the road as we pulled in.
Yep, that's right. We saw a moose on the first road we took to look for one and we didn't even have to stop the car or anything. We'd stay here for the next half an hour or so.
There wasn't just one moose either. There were three. Two never stood up in our time there but one (that we are assuming was male) did.
Sometimes nature isn't that exciting. All this moose did was eat and walk. Nothing to get too worked up about maybe. But sometimes nature is exciting enough just being there in front of us and this was probably one of those times. We haven't seen a lot of wild moose in our lives. In fact, I think we'd only ever seen one other moose outside of captivity and that was a female eating by the side of the road in Alaska in 2017. So the three we saw that morning in Rocky Mountain represented a threefold increase over and above the most moose we had seen before and the largest set of antlers we'd ever seen on a wild moose.
Not impressed by the large antlers? I know, they are a work in progress but we were thrilled with this sighting. For about 30 minutes. The moose were near the Colorado, by the way. The picture of the River above was taken maybe 1/4 of a mile from where we spotted our moose.
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| Moose at Sheep Lakes. Rocky Mountain National Park. |
But that wasn't it for the moose in Rocky Mountain National Park for us. We managed to see a fourth (assuming it was not the same moose we saw in the morning) in the opposite corner of the Park later that same day after dinner. Sure enough, it was getting towards night and the moose started moving.
We got to watch this one drinking and running. I know...thrilling, right. But it was. These things can move fast even though they look like they are just ambling along at a leisurely trot. Long legs cover ground I guess. I am positive this thing could have been on top of us in less than a minute from about a quarter to half mile away. Fortunately, it looked like it was really after water, because it stopped for a drink when it got to the lake before moving along again at a similar clip in a different direction. By the time that happened, there were other animal sightings afoot that took our attention away from a lone moose drinking and running.
The antlers on the running moose were about the same size as the one we saw in the a.m. so we are still looking for one of these creatures with some massive headgear. Still, four moose in one day? Pretty satisfied here. Long way to go in the future with these beasts I'm hoping.
Elk
For all the National Park visits I've made over the years in this country, I'd only seen one elk in the wild in Yellowstone in 2011. And that was from a long distance. Obviously by the photograph above, we out-did that experience easily on this trip.
The pro tip from Rocky Mountain National Park for spotting elk was look for them above the treeline (so on the tundra, pretty much) in summer. Didn't work. We looked at a lot of wide open spaces above the treeline in the park and didn't see so much as a single elk out there. We did, however, find elk in a couple of spots where we headed to see other wildlife.
First of all, our strategy of just taking lefts at every turnout off the main road on the west side of the park like we used to find moose worked equally well for elk. We found two individuals apart from each other but generally off along the line of the woods by stopping at the Coyote Valley Trail and found the group of four above just about a half an hour later at Beaver Creek Picnic Area. Ironically, we saw no coyote at Coyote Valley nor did we see any beaver at Beaver Creek. Or anywhere else in the park for that matter. But elk? Yeah we saw them there, albeit at a pretty good distance away.
It does not take anywhere near a half an hour to get between the two spots discussed above on a straight drive and that's because we got a pretty up close and personal encounter with a group of three elk about 20-25 feet off the side of the road to our right between Coyote Valley and Beaver Creek.
This group of three (two of which are shown above; I believe the second picture is of the one on the right in the first picture) would be the closest we'd get to this species in our day plus on the road here. We might honestly have missed them if it weren't for the couple of cars stopped in the opposite direction looking up on the hill right above our northbound lane. They were difficult to see because where they were standing was pretty much straight vertical from our position and out of our direct line of sight. But once we found them they were super close. And with a gorgeous backdrop of trees to add to the sighting.
Stopped cars are great on wildlife trips by the way. They are the universal symbol for I see something, no matter where you are looking for creatures.
I've sometimes had a tendency to dismiss elk as uninteresting. After all, they are just big deer with antlers that very much resemble those of the deer we have all around us in the woods at home. But elk aren't big, they are massive. And there's nothing like an up close encounter with these things to reinforce that fact. These are really big and powerful creatures.
If there's a feature of elk that adds to the impression of power, it's a fully developed antler rack because on a full-grown elk, these things are sharp and it shows. All the elk we saw at Rocky Mountain had velvet antlers, meaning they are still growing and developing. I guess the elk really need fully grown headgear when they get into rutting season in September and October and they may need to use these things as weapons.
The other spot in the Park where we managed to find some elk was just to the west of Sheep Lakes and down the road to Alluvial Fan. Each of our sightings here were solitary elk but they both showed off some impressive antlers. There was some kind of crazy tourist trying to get as close as he possibly could to the one shown immediately above for a good picture. And he was on foot. If that thing had charged...
Don't get close to wildlife, folks. There's "wild" in the name after all. Nothing bad ended up happening. The tourist spooked the elk eventually causing it to move off away from us.
By Rocky Mountain standards, the kind of elk sightings we had might have actually been relatively modest. There are frequently fairly large herds of these animals to be found. All the individuals we came across I assume were solitary bulls or bachelor herds. I imagine the larger groups are made up of does and fawns. Still, considering I was at one wild elk before entering the Park, I was more than content with the five or six different occasions where we got to observe these creatures, and super happy with the closest look we got.
Bighorn Sheep
There are a few species on this planet that seem to be really good at eluding me. Flamingos, penguins and bighorn sheep come to mind here. I've been looking without many good results for bighorn sheep for probably about 10 or so years and it seems like every other year or so I look and find nothing. We did get a glimpse of these animals in Utah in 2015 and saw a herd a couple of years later in New Mexico. After Rocky Mountain National Park, I'll continue to look for them when I travel but I don't think they are avoiding me anymore.
As I wrote earlier in this post, it seemed to us that the logical places to start looking for bighorn sheep were Bighorn Mountain and Sheep Lakes. I mean, why name these places like that if there were no bighorn sheep there? They are, by the way, right next to one another. Apparently the sheep come down off the mountain, cross the road and then head to the watering hole. We didn't know that before we visited the Park.
As soon as we pulled into the parking lot near Bighorn Mountain, we noticed a family of about five or six people hurrying away from their picnic table. Six bighorns had just run by and, cameras in hand, the humans were in hot pursuit across a sheep poop infested field. Seemed like a good sign but chasing across a field to follow sheep running in a forest is not a winnable war. We got there too late. No sheep.
Now if we had known the part about the sheep leaving the mountain and heading for the lakes, we'd have just hopped in the car and driven down to the parking area near Sheep Lakes. But we didn't, so we lingered at Bighorn Mountain, figuring if six sheep can come down the mountain, why can't some more. They didn't. Not while we were there.
Have I mentioned how lucky we were on this trip?
We finally did make it to Sheep Lakes and fortunately we were blessed with the sight of four rams drinking from one of the lakes. Finally, a clear, long look at this species!! There was no hurry and they didn't go anywhere for the hour that we spent there watching them. You read that right: an hour!
Now they were pretty far away but we did bring our super duper Nikon COOLPIX P900 camera with us which usually serves double duty as our binoculars and long distance camera which allowed us to get some terrific shots of the sheep. And yes, it must have been molting season or something. These are some shaggy sheep.
So we didn't see them scaling the mountainside on an impossibly steep slope or battling for dominance with their horns. This was a quality sighting all the same.
Then it got better.
There are two lakes at Sheep Lakes: one to the south of the parking lot and one to the west. While we were looking south, more sheep had arrived to the west.
By more sheep, I mean about 20 to 25 ewes and lambs.
This was just an incredible sight. I'm assuming the four rams we were looking at were a bachelor group of sorts. The moms and kids were a huge bonus here and we could see them closer than the rams and in superb detail thanks to our camera. The sum total of all the activity here was getting a drink of water and having the moms make sure their lambs were staying put and staying safe. We've seen mother and baby scenes in the wild before but I'm not sure I've seen a group this big where every mother seems to have a child to look after.
It seems odd to get crazy enthusiastic about a few mothers and children going for a drink but this is what nature's about. Survival, raising young...this is life. This is it!
We appreciate just how lucky we got here. We've searched and earned this. By all accounts from the people around us and the ranger on hand, this was a great sight to see. We met a family from California later that night in the same spot (long after the sheep had gone) and talked to a guy who'd been hoping to see bighorn sheep for years including in Rocky Mountain and had pretty much failed spectacularly. We know we were super fortunate. We'll take it. We had some disappointments earlier in this trip. I'll take those too considering this payoff.
Since we had a ranger around and no inkling as to where to look for bears, we thought we'd ask. We didn't get a good answer, just that probably not near Sheep Lakes. She said she hadn't seen any bears in that location for two years.
Bears
After we had checked moose, elk and sheep off our wish list, we discussed the likelihood of us seeing bears on this trip. My response here was I thought we would; I was feeling it. Big time! Call it bravado but I felt good about it. And I was right. And it was at Sheep Lakes.
There's something a little thrilling about seeing animals in the wild. Any animals I mean. But ultimately when it comes down to it, the predators are more thrilling than the prey. First, they are generally more scarce; they just don't multiply and live the way grass eaters do. Second, and this may just be me, but I think predators are much more resourceful and strategic about the way they live. After all, you don't have to think about how to eat grass or leaves; you need to up your game if you are hunting, even if it's just the diet of a black bear.
So I'm all into this moose running across this field, right? I mean really feeling pretty great about seeing another moose.
Then my wife yells: "BEAR!"
Of all our wildlife encounters in Rocky Mountain, our look at a momma bear and two cubs were the least clear, the most rushed and the least well photographed. But if we hadn't been chasing bighorn sheep for over a decade, it would have been the best.
We'd seen a scene similar to this one a few years ago at Denali with a grizzly bear and her two cubs. Just another day in the life of a bear, really: moving from one place to the next searching for something to eat along the way while mother keeps an eye on the kids who really just want to mess around at least half the time.
It is difficult to get any sort of detailed look at anything watching wildlife from the distance we were at that night. But right after I took the first bear photo in this post, mom tossed aside a rock probably about a quarter her size probably looking for grubs or something. A rock a quarter the size of an adult bear isn't small and I have to tell you that thing got tossed aside like I was moving the couch cushions looking for loose change. It moved! And quick. It really gave me a sense of the strength of this animal that it could move something that heavy so easily.
Shortly after that, they were gone.
And I don't really toss aside the couch cushions to look for change. It was the best analogy I could think of.
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| Bighorn Mountain. Where the sheep come from. |
It is also awesome to end a trip on a high note like this, particularly when I wondered before we left home if the trip we planned to take (to California) would be better than the one we actually took. I'm not sure I have any complaints and I'm sure a big reason for this was our experience at Rocky Mountain. I know I went home with nothing left on the table which is an awesome feeling.
I'm also glad we missed this place last fall, despite my frustration with Frontier Airlines on the day we were supposed to be leaving. I know if we'd have visited in November, we likely wouldn't have had a day anywhere near this awesome and we never would have gone back. Now, it's part of my best travel memories.
If you go and if you have a spouse or a friend with good eyes, take that person. Of all the wildlife we saw in this park, I think I only spotted one of these animals first. My wife did all the hard work here. But that's no surprise to me.
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| When you get the chance to stand on a pile of snow in late June, I say go for it! |
How We Did It
Rocky Mountain National Park is open every day of the year. But there are a couple of buts.
Right now in the summer of 2020 if you plan to enter the Park by car between the hours of 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. you need a reservation which will allow you to enter the park in a two hour window. Details about how to reserve a spot can be found on the Park's website. We reserved passes as soon as they went on sale for our times on June 26 and 27 of this year. If you plan to enter the park before 6 in the morning or after 5 in the afternoon, no reservation is required.
We entered the Park just after 6 a.m. on June 26 at the Grand Lake Entrance Station and found nobody around to check our reservation so we just drove in. The next day we entered just a bit later at Fall River Entrance Station and found the gate fully staffed and reservations being checked.
Also, part of Trail Ridge Road is routinely closed from mid-October through Memorial Day so making the same drive we made inside of that window isn't possible. We also saw notifications that the road was partially closed just a couple of weeks before we visited based on snow. Yes, in mid-June. Keep an eye on the status of the Road if you plan to visit pretty much outside of July and August.
We stayed in Winter Park southwest of the Park and in Estes Park northeast of the Park. Both towns were great for us, with plenty of dining options in both locations.
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