Nature Hike!

Now that the craziness surrounding my degree is (more or less) finished, I've been taking time to enjoy the great outdoors almost every day. Today D and I hiked in the Lair O' the Bear park just up the canyon from us and had a bit of a nature class outside, which was really fun.

First we started noticing some of the tracks on the ground. There were tracks from shoes and bicycles, but there were also some very large deer-like tracks on the ground, along with what I believe the outdoorsy types call "scat," which led us to conclude that there were probably some elk wandering around the park.

I was also looking at all the broken tree limbs around the park in what might best be described as puzzlement. I couldn't figure out what was going on until D reminded me that we had a super heavy snow last week, which must have broken quite a few trees. Because we normally get the light, powdery variety in Colorado, and because we don't get ice storms, I guess I forgot that precipitation can weigh on branches and cause them to break.

We got confirmation of the elk when we ran into a herd on the back loop of the trail. There were four or five of them, complete with velvety antlers.