My Favorite Place

Growing up in Colorado one of my favorite places to go was Rocky Mountain National Park. We would go up there skiing at Hidden Valley Ski area (now long gone) fishing and hiking. In the fall we would drive up in the evenings to listen to the elk bugle and watch the elk rut. Early the fourth day of my trip to Colorado found me up before the sunrise driving up Milner Pass to catch the sunrise at Rainbow Curve on Trail Ridge Road. The wind was just howling when I got there! It was a beautiful sunrise but the fog closed in as I got to the top of the pass at over 12,000 ft. Man it's tough for a flat lander like me to move around at that elevation. But it was worth it to hear the elk bugling mysteriously in the fog. I drove by the Marmot Sentinel at Rock Cut. There is almost always a Marmot there whenever I go by there! I parked my car and sat out on the rocks and waited for the Pikas to appear. They are the cutest little mammal to photograph. It is so much fun to watch them come and go gathering up plants for their hay piles to make it through the winter. I will gladly photograph them any day over elk or deer. Eventually the cold and the altitude got to me and I had to go back down. Even with a winter jacket, gloves and a wool hat! On the way out of the park I ran into a bear jam where there were a momma and two cubs gorging themselves on chokecherries for the upcoming winter. I also photographed a bull elk taking a bit of a snooze. The weather wasn't great but I was blessed and delighted by what I got to see and photograph. God's love and blessings to all, chris All images were created with my Canon 7DmkII and my damaged Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD. The lens did a fantastic job for having a cracked lens element and a loose mount from falling out of my backpack onto the concrete.