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"MOOSE"
Yelled a kid in our campground this morning as we were putting the last of our stuff in the car this morning. About 200 feet from our campsite two moose (meese?) were ambling through the campground. They took their sweet time moving and were munching on some small trees when we caught up with them. As soon as we got somewhat near them, they emerged from the trees and began walking, slowly, in our general direction. At that point, we began moving, not slowly, away from them. But we got some pictures of them anyway. Given their lack of antlers, it appears that they were a mother and child. About 15 minutes later, we passed what we initially thought were two wolves on the side of the road. After looking at some pictures later in the day, we think that they might have been coyotes. We'll put the video Bethany shot of them up on the site, in case anyone is smarter about these things than we are.
We spent the rest of the morning doing a National Scenic trail along Grand and Shadow Mountain Lakes, taking a leisurely 80 minutes to do the ~3.6 miles outbound, and about 45 minutes to just about jog it on the return trip, as a thunderstorm materialized "out of nowhere" and we were treated to some pretty exciting lighting yet again. Fortunately we had stuffed rain jackets in my backpack before we left, which came in handy on the rest of the hike.
After some great pizza (with honey in the sauce -- pretty amazing) we left for the scenic route to Vail, passing through Berthoud Pass on the way. Just west of Vail, we met up with the Rev. Alex Large (fraternity brother of Andrew at W&L) and his wife Emily and child Eloise. We went up to Beaver Creek for dinner. Beaver Creek was pretty empty, not because of the summer season, but because the Rodeo was in town.
Just before dark, we drove through Glenwood Canyon and eventually stopped for the night in Grand Junction, which was a pretty popular destination, as most hotels in town were booked. We ended up staying in perhaps the worst hotel room either Bethany or I have seen, complete with cracked tile bathroom floors, two bathroom sinks, one of which was for show, as it didn't actually have any water pressure, and ancient beds with visible and audible springs that actually sounded like they were falling apart when you sat up. Fortunately, we didn't spend very much time here, as we checked in late and were gone by 7am the following morning.
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