GarThai: Jul 12, 2011

Hunt for Megafauna

Megafauna means large animals. It's one of my favorite words - I generally enjoy words with the prefix -mega.

Anyway. After the bear sighting, we were too psyched to go back to sleep, so we took a sunrise drive to search for wildlife. And we were VERY successful. First we found a group of four bull elks:

Then we stumbled across a mid-sized coyote:

We saw more deer and elk throughout the day.

Oh, and I don't want to forget the two giant bull moose:

Location:County Rd,Grand Lake,United States

BEAR!

I woke up early this morning (5AM) and had to pee, which is odd in and of itself because, as lily will testify, I litcherally pee about once a week. I think my bear sense was going off or something. When I exited the campground bathroom I saw...A BEAR ABOUT 30 FEET AWAY!

And it was walking directly toward our campsite. Unfortunately, I didn't get any great video or pictures of the guy because he proceeded to first sniff around our bearbox (where we keep all our food). This was a little nervewracking.

You can kinda sorta see him to the left of the bearbox. Then I stopped filming bc the bear literally walked right over to our tent - with lily still asleep inside. He got close enough to touch the tent, thereby awarding lily the prize of Closest-To-Being-Eaten-By-A-Beat. Fortunately, he then ambled away looking for more food. I woke lilster up and we had a nice lil gander of the bear a he moseyed along, but he was a skittish little fella and quickly hightailed it back to the woods.

Love bears.
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Location:Aspen St,Hot Sulphur Springs,United States

Campfire talky times

One of the best parts of camping is campfires. Everyone knows this. You get in touch with your inner caveman/cavewoman and harness the power of fire, like Prometheus.

You go from this:

To this!

See what I did there? Anyway, there are a few things you can add to a fire to make it better. These things include 1) beer 2) wine 3) whiskey 4) cards, and 5) marshmallows. Now, we are not flawless campers. We have forgotten such essentials as sponges, paper towels, and...plates. But we dang sure remembered campfire augmenters 1-5!

1) beer

4) cards

I don't have pics of 2, 3, or 5, but I do have a picture of me looking happy/proud of my campfire abilities.

We talked about lots of things, including pop psychology, how the sky looked like the ocean, a movie starring the moon - and most importantly, what to do if a bear tried to enter our tent and eat us during the night. Why was that important? Well, read on, faithful gartfollowers...
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Location:Glacier Pass Campground, RMNP

Smokin' Dave's

After our big ole hike, we realized that we were frikkin starving, so we headed to Smokin' Dave's BBQ & Taphouse. I have no idea what a Taphouse is, but that still has to be one of my favorite restaurant names ever. I consumed two margaritas and a chili cheeseburger. It was awesome.

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Location:Estes Park, CO

Hike #1

We did an EPIC 8.5 mile loop hike in Rocky Mountain National Park today (hereinafter RMNP). That's a long first hike! Good job, us!

Strike that - good job ME. Lily basically runs 87 miles a day, whereas I get winded walking from my couch to my front door when the pizza delivery guy knocks (ripped off HIMYM there). I'm just happy I kept up with her/didn't have a heart attack. Here's Lily looking not tired:

Here's me looking mostly dead:

Anyway, the rangers warned us that a section of the trail was mostly impassable due to excessive snow. Didn't stop us! We conquered those snow fields like we were...uh...Lewis and Clark? I don't know what analogy is appropriate there.

We did get lost for about half-mile but we recovered nicely. All told, we hiked around 6 alpine lakes with fun names (Bear Lake, Glacier Lake, Emerald Lake, Lake Haiyana, etc.). Here's Lily at Emerald Lake:

I know, it's not emerald at all. What a ripoff.

Oh and here's an avalanche that wiped away part of the trail. You can see Lily blazing her own trail. What a natural!

And here are just some standard pretty scenery shots:

And here's one of me standing on my head:

(I have no idea how that happened).

If your curious about our route, here's the map. Oh and for the record, yes, we hiked to an elevation of about 10,400 feet.

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Location:County Rd,Grand Lake,United States

Rocky Mountain National Park

Hi GART-mates!

We have officially entered phase 2 of the trip: camping. For the next 5 days, instead of hurtling st top speed across the USA, we'll be taking a more leisurely pace, stopping in national parks and scenic spots, hiking, camping, and exploring.

We just arrived here but things are already looking good: