Ryan Herbert

WE SAW A MOOSE!!!

You've got to understand, we've wanted to see a moose for months. MONTHS!! Every time we were anywhere remotely near moose watching country, we put in our moose miles. You see, we had a theory that you had to put in a certain amount of moose hours while in eligible moose miles in order to see a moose. So we put in more moose miles and moose hours than we could count, and it FINALLY paid off! In fact, we didn't just see one moose... we saw THREE!! Buy I'll get to that.

Alright so we both went to school in the mountains, so we know all about mountains. Except I didn't, because the Rockies are NOTHING like the Appalachian Mountains. The mountain range in Rocky Mountain National Park is overwhelmingly large. When we first saw them from far away, I thought that the top layer of the range was a cloud, because it was too tall to be part of the mountains. Boy was I wrong! The other thing is that the Rockies are very (wait for it) ...rocky. Appalachian mountains have some rocks, but they mostly have a lot of trees and foliage all over them. The Rockies had trees and growth, but you could always see the rocks underneath and in all of the cliffs.

We explored the park a bit and did some short hikes, and then took a long, one way, dirt road to explore deeper into the park. Even in August, the Rockies had glaciers on their peaks, which I was very excited about. At one point in the drive, we realized that we could pull over and climb up a short part of the mountainside, and we would be able to touch one of the glaciers. So of course we did that. On the way back, Eric channeled the power of the Eagle Scout and spotted our bull moose down in the valley next to us.

So we just about passed out from excitement, then scurried back to the car as fast as possible to get our binoculars. We half yelled/half whispered to everyone we passed that "THERE'S A MOOSE DOWN THERE," then scampered as far down the mountain towards the moose as we dared. Two people, a brother and a sister, were also excited about the moose, so we watched it together. As we were standing there reveling in the moose's existence, we realize that the brown log next to the bull moose... uh. It's ears just moved. So now we've got a (really giant) bull moose grazing, with a cow moose lying in the grass next to him. Then the four of us realize that there's another, even bigger bull moose in the bushes behind them. So we're having a great time at this point.

All of the sudden, we see a herd of elk migrate in over the ridge to our right. Then we see a coyote limping away from them, apparently having tried to attack one, who sits down and howls to the sky. Five minutes later, an entire pack of coyotes are howling and yipping in the bushes right next to the elk. That eventually calms down, but then we see another herd of elk down in the valley, and the bull elk from the two herds start bugling at each other.

At that point, we had been sitting on this ridge for almost 2 hours, and it was getting really cold and dark, so we had to leave. But that was definitely one of the coolest things we've experienced! We also got to be at the top of the Rocky Mountains at sunset, which is never a bad thing!Read more