The Latest Trips and Stuff

Enjoying our new (old) house - more the area than the house really. we broke down and bought kayaks so we can cruise the sound when we feel like it. on our first ride i was feeling kinda icky about spending so much money on them but thinking that i enjoyed it so what the hell, then i looked over and 3 huge yachts cruised by and i felt the immense smallness of me in my kayak and my few measly thousand dollars. Fairfield County is good for one thing - keeping you in check with what you don't have. Most cities keep you in check for what you DO have, but this one makes you feel very humbled by what you don't have and never will. But my boy Lance recently got promoted to a veep so maybe we're on our way after all. Ahhh....the American Dream.

Well, anyways, thanks to a woodsy marsh that surrounds the power plant near our house (!), we have spotted deer, wild turkeys, osprey, opposums, and a few different types of herons on the island. The power plant is sealed off with a fence though, so oftentimes the animals are looking at US through the fence - they have freedom to roam there and we do not! The guy that makes me happiest is a very young buck with one crooked antler (probably due to the power plant!) who curiously stares at me on my evening stroll. Oh, and one night we found a big fat toad on our front lawn and talked to him a little then moved on. A few minutes later, Bob the Cat crawled out of some nearby bushes with gobs of white foam oozing out of his mouth followed by a pyschotic episode of jumping straight in the air. Bob became a celebrity in the vet's office that night - two vets wheeling out a stretcher as we were leaving said to me "Oh, that must be Bob who licked a toad" chuckle chuckle. We'd become neurotic parents to a psychotically induced toad licking cat.

Great bookstores in Denver (Tattered Cover - huge, quiet, good selection - we poked around for a few hours on a Saturday night) and sports bars in which to watch the Pack completely destroy the meager Vikes. Great microbrews though - highly recommend the Bull & Bush Pub - the best green chili (Denver's specialty) and house brews, attentive & kind service, and a million TVs. Other than that, not a lot to do in Denver besides shop for Western wear and be a sports fan.

So, we cruised up to Estes Park and spent a day hiking in Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park and watching the elk rut. Well not actually rut but the precursor to the rut. Watched & listened to a few males butting heads from a few yards away. They don't lock horns because that expends too much energy so instead they put their foreheads together and compete in a test of wills which doesn't work out so well because eventually their horns tend to get tangled up anyways. It was cool to hear though - you could hear them huffing hard and then holding their breath as they pushed one another around. We also saw a huge group of females & youth - at least 100 - move through a meadow in the park. The males guard the perimeter of the group so none of the females get away and the largest male (the stud) with a gigantic antler rack stands a ways away & bugles. Wacky wild stuff. Literally.

A better explanation of what we saw:
"You may be fortunate enough to see a bull elk rounding up his "harem" in one of the National Park's montane meadows, or in town on our golf courses and lawns. Bulls have various levels of experience in herding. Some are "studs" and others are wannabes. The stud is the bull that is clearly in command. There may be other competitors nearby, but they can't compete with the mature bull's display of antlers and his bellowing bugle. This swashbuckler gathers and cloisters his cows with apparent ease. Often, one or two other bulls stand on the sidelines, watching with obvious frustration. Even those who have managed to corner a cow or two watch helplessly as their prospects evade them and run toward a growing assembly of cows, yearlings and calves which have gathered near another bull. You may also notice a bull with broken antlers or half a rack — the result of competitive battles between bulls."

Video of stud controlling the harem & he does a nice loud bugle at the end:



Oh, and we hiked for 3-4 hours on a trail up a mountain, around a mountain, and up another mountain, to one of those perfectly picturesque crystal clear national park glacial mountainy lakes, tracking some Germans who ambled up the mountain like they were healthy or something. Damn's us Americans is out of shape! Will post pics just as soon as I can.