Elk and Moose and More Elk, Oh My!

When we first drove into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado I was so amazed by how awesome they were. I felt like I had just walked into Narnia. There were so many mountains, and rivers in the distance. This was my first time going to the Rockies and it is definitely not going to be my last!

After driving a few hours we made it to the campground. It was not at all what we expected it to be. I thought there would be lots of trees and plenty of privacy, but I was wrong. Well it turned out there used to be lots of trees there, but all that’s left is a bunch of stumps. I guess they had to cut them all down because of a tiny little bug called the pine beetle. The beetles infest the trees which kills them so they have to cut them down. As we were driving along the road, I noticed a bunch of log piles in the woods. They were piles of pine trees that had to get burned because they got infested, and believe me, there were LOTS of piles! It’s hard to imagine what the campground would look like with a bunch of trees, but I think it would have been a lot better. Oh, and almost every evening we would have a herd of elk visit our campground. At first the elk were cool, but then we would see them EVERYWHERE and they sort of started to get boring. I mean, they would be on the side of the road like ants would be on a chocolate cake that got left outside! While I’m taking about elk I might as well mention the moose too. We saw about 6 or 7 moose on our visit to the Rockies that’s including a mom and a baby munching away on some bushes by the river. Since the baby follows the mom everywhere, at one point the mom pooped on the baby! It was really funny! So we saw a mom and a baby, about 3 bull moose with antlers, and a few more females. They were all so cool!

We also attended a ranger program about moose, which was really interesting! Did you know that during the rut (the mating season), to attract the females the male moose do this thing called scraping. Scraping is when the moose picks a spot in the dirt and scrapes it with his hooves, then he urinates in it. Next he will then roll in it. I guess this makes him smell good to the females, although I don’t know how having pee all over you would be attractive!

The next day we drove on trail ridge road, the highest continuous paved road in America! The road’s highest point is 12,183 feet in elevation! That’s 4,183 feet higher than the road they take in “The Long, Long Trailer” which is like my favorite movie starring Lucille Ball, well…… actually it’s the only movie I’ve seen staring Lucille Ball. But anyway when we got to the top we were at the alpine tundra. It was about 47 degrees up there, and 77 degrees down at the bottom of the mountain! The wind was soooooo fierce and strong that if you jumped with your sweatshirt out like wings, you would fly about a foot in front of you! It was really fun, but what was even better was getting back into the nice and warm car!

While we were driving along the trail ridge road we stopped at the continental divide. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s an imaginary line that runs from Alaska to Mexico where on the east side of the line all the water and melted snow flows to the Atlantic Ocean and on the west side it all flows to the Pacific Ocean. The Rocky Mountains were truly amazing, and our stay there was beautiful! This was absolutely one of my favorite parts of the trip so far, I will really miss it!