After leaving the Grand Tetons I headed south to visit friends south of Denver for Labor Day weekend. I was a day or so early so I stopped off at the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Drove all the way from the west entrance to the east side and saw not one elk nor any other critter. Did a couple of short hikes near the Dream Lake area and camped overnight.
Leaving the park the next morning at 7:30am I saw 3 large bucks and a smaller one near the east entrance. They all still had velvet on their antlers. The large ones seemed to all be 8 pointers while the small one just had prongs. All of the antlers were huge though. They seemed to go straight up and were much higher than I would have thought. Reminded me of Don King, the boxing promoter with his wild hair.
5 minutes later, outside the park I found 10-12 Rocky Mountain big horn sheep grazing along the side of the road. Another 10-12 were a little farther up the slope. These were the first Rocky Mountain big horns I'd been near and it was a great experience to sit and watch them for a while. They must have just been down for a drink at the stream on the other side of the water.
Visited friends over the weekend and came back to the park on Tuesday. Found some elk in the evening, did a couple of short hikes the next day and then found elk everywhere in the evening. Dunno where they were before.
Drove to Aspen, enjoying the scenery and then down to Silverton. The aspens were just starting to turn towards their fall colors. I'm going back to my friends for Thanksgiving but was at loose ends as to how to spend the intervening time. Now I knew, follow the fall foliage through the Rockies. But the good stuff was still a couple of weeks away.