Wildlife in Grand Lake

I am pleased to report that we saw quite a bit of wildlife, especially while we were staying on the west side of RMNP.  On our way into Grand Lake, we found these fellas on the side of the road.  We thought they were goats until we asked a park ranger, who informed us that these are bighorn sheep!  And she was shocked that we saw these along a major road, so we were even more excited to have seen them.

Their horns weren't very big yet-she said that it takes about 10 years to get really big horns.

There were so many!














On our first morning in the park, we saw two moose hanging out by Coyote Valley Trail.  Josh was really looking to spot a moose on this trip, so he was especially pumped to see one so soon!





Here's a video of the kids talking about the moose.








Later that afternoon we were driving down the road from our cabin when we spotted a female moose with a baby.






So cute!










A little ways from them we saw a bull moose!






He chilled in this spot for about 4 hours.  We went to town and back and he was still there!







On our last morning in Grand Lake, we tried to take a trail and were surprised to find a ton of elk blocking our way.

These guys were posted up and I was too timid to try to shoo them away!

We saw a couple more crossing the trail we ended up going on.  Look in the background to see one.












One last baby moose and its mom after our hike.













We think that we may have seen more wildlife than typical due to the less-than-ideal weather we experienced while in Grand Lake.  At least, that's what we are telling ourselves :)  It was so awesome to get to see so many animals in their natural habitat and the kids really got into trying to spot them.  They loved carrying around their binoculars!