Yesterday (and today for that matter) turned out to be another fabulous sunny, comfortable day in Colorado! Mark and I decided to take a drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park, Moraine, Estes Park, and Trail Ridge Road to check out the fall colors and to see the elk in their rutting season.
Drove up to Trail Ridge Road first and stopped at our favorite spot to photograph. Temperature at almost 12,000 feet was about 54 degrees. In Fort Collins, the temperature was in the mid-80s. Photographed some cute yellow fall flowers; I'm always amazed that they can flourish at that altitude! Stopped at the Alpine Visitor Center for a quick bite before we headed back down to Moraine to check out the elk rutting and to capture pictures of the fall colors throughout the park.
Saw several "harems" of elk with the large bull elk guarding his ladies from younger bull elk. Saw very interesting behavior with one of the harems once we got down to Estes Park. We were watching the bull elk keep his girls all together. All of a sudden, we saw two females cross one of the main roads into Estes Park looking for the pack. They jumped a fence and casually walked over to the rest of the harem. Of course the bull elk had to check them out, probably checking for a male scent.
Next thing we know, we spotted a young bull elk slowly making his way over to the fence in search of the females. He was cautious and took his time. He was no more than 4 or 5 yards from me; he even looked at me! But he certainly had other things on his mind and couldn't care less about the humans that were around.
He finally got up the courage, jumped the fence then nonchalantly started walking over to where the females were. It only took about a minute or so and the large bull elk, got up and deliberately started walking a straight line towards the young bull elk. He went a few yards, then broke into a gallop! The young bull elk decided it was a bad decision and quickly high tailed it out of there.
Such an interesting display of elk rutting! Everyone should get to see this at least once in their lifetime! Click on the fall picture on the right and you'll see a lot of the photos we took yesterday.
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