2016 Summer Road Trip: UT, CO, NM: Day 35: State Forest State Park, CO--EPIC!!!

Day 35: Sat, 7/16: State Forest State Park, CO

Today was epic! We all agree today was probably the best day of the trip. We ate breakfast and then walked 5 minutes to Ranger Lakes and all four of us fished. We were on fire—catching a total of 45 fish between the four of us (all rainbow trout—Sarah 17, Ryan 14, Sam and Andrea 7 each!). It was fun watching everyone catch so many fish. We used barbless hooks and powerbait. Most of the fish were easy catch and release but we did end up keeping 7 of them to eat tomorrow night. We then wanted to go looking for moose and a geocache along a single track trail leading away from our camp along meadows. So we got on our bikes with our GPS and as we neared where the geocache was, Sam looked the other way out in the meadow and spotted a female moose about 75 yards away. She was so cute wiggling her ears, looking at us and eating in the small river. After signing the geocache log and enjoying the moose, we then got in our car and drove to Walden to find more moose. We saw a pronghorn along the way and many deer. We ate a good dinner in Walden and then drove back looking for more moose. We stopped at Beaver Meadow Trail and hiked 1 mile looking at beaver dams and lodges. We didn’t see any beavers but we loved how many beautiful wildflowers that were blossoming. Reds, yellows, indigos, blues, purples, orange, white, and pink. It was a nice stop but then we got back to moose searching. Sam spotted two moose down in a meadow so we turned down that road and watched them briefly from about 50 yards away. We then drove up the highway and Sam saw a moose sitting in the tall grasses. We could just see her head and cute big ears above the grass. Then we continued driving towards Cameron Pass at around 830 pm and Sarah yelled “moose with baby!” So we pulled to the side of the road and enjoyed watching the adorable baby and her mother eat and look at us from about 50 yards away. We continued driving up to Cameron Pass and Ryan spotted a good sized male moose 30 yards from our car. We watched him eat and watch us. Then he walked parallel to the road and into the forest. I saw him and was walking on the side of the road tracking him when I saw he was going to enter a meadow on the side of the road. So we drove to that meadow and all got out of the car and saw the large male moose about 20 yards from us. Incredible! We turned around to head back and Sam jokingly taunted Andrea saying, “we all spotted moose except you!” Sure enough, less than one minute later as we were driving, Andrea spotted a HUGE male moose right on the side of the road next to us. We pulled up next to him and he was about 5 feet away! He was walking slowly next to us and then he crossed the road in front of us. He stopped in the middle of the road and we admired his size. After he crossed, we saw another large male moose in another meadow about 25 yards away. He also crossed the road in front of us. We were so excited to encounter so many moose. We also saw about 20 deer at various spots right along the side of the road. We had to drive slowly to avoid hitting any moose or deer. Today, we had set out to fish, mountain bike, and search for animals. We hit the jackpot. Incredible!