Amazing Colorado Scenery and Intense Elk Rutting // Travels
We have a new personal rule: We are not allowed to travel to beautiful places without booking a photo shoot. Next time, we'll let people know our travel dates! Jon captured some KILLER landscape photos (this post is just part 1), and we'd love to meet new people and photograph them in places like these.
Colorado is such a beautiful frontier! We LOVED exploring Colorado together! My birthday is at the end of October, and Jon had been mentioning that he wanted to take me on a trip for my birthday. Like any traveler-adventurer-explorer-the-best-deal-finder-husband, Jon found incredible prices on Frontier flights to Colorado for $85 (round trip, direct flight). YES, PLEASE.
Within a week, we planned this trip! We flew into Denver and were kindly picked up by our friend, Lauren, who drove us to a car rental place. Next stop was Chick-fil-a for breakfast and hiking at Estes Park! Lauren was a wonderful tour guide, and we loved spending time with her. We were bragging that we had woken up at 3:30am EST to catch our flight, but we were quickly brought to perspective when she said, "I've been awake since....yesterday!"
I was shocked.
I had totally forgotten that she was a nurse and never considered that she'd pull an all-nighter AND THEN go hiking. She's a tough one!
Here are some photos of the first day in Estes Park (we drove to Nebraska that evening). Jon is a MASTER at landscapes. His nature photos always amaze me!
We really wanted to see some wildlife while hiking, though nothing too dangerous. But there was nothing. Maybe a bird.
After hiking and grabbing something to eat in town, we decided to drive to the water to hang out before we headed to Nebraska for the rest of the week. And that's when we saw them.
ELK.
SO MANY OF THEM.
Apparently, they were at the peak of rutting season. What you see below are a couple herds of elk (one is in the water). The head bulls of each herd are trying to protect their cows (females) while also stealing cows from the other herd to add to their own. It was crazy amazing to watch, and to see these animals fighting for what they wanted.
A few photos down, you'll see one bull bugling to the other cows, trying to get them to come over. The other bull kept reigning them back in until the bugling bull RAN ACROSS THE FIELD to get 2 or 3 of them.
At the end, you'll see the two bulls rutting (one had already lost an antler from a previous rut). The loser angrily resigns to the water.
Honestly, I think people were standing way too close to the action! In a moment, those creatures can destroy you and your vehicle. So powerful, and so beautiful to watch! We are so glad we got to see this!
Above are some majestic photos of Twin Peaks while we took a scenic route to Nebraska. Since we have SO MANY PHOTOS to share, we'll have to write another post including some gorgeous images from Nebraska (cue the Milky Way!) and more of Colorado!
