Today was SUNNY!!!. Our one and only sunny day here at Big Lake, so we decided to go on a LONG ride. We knew it was going to be a good day because Jeff spotted a horny toad in the campground, our first wildlife for a while, so we will surely see more today. Sherry chased it out of the road, so then she picked it up so I could get a picture.
Jeff decided we should go to Hannagan Meadow for lunch, so off we went. Jeff, our leader, spooked a small herd of bucks right beside the road, but Joe and I didn't see them. He said there were 8, all bucks. They call these "bachelor buck herds." He said he had seen elk like this, but never deer. When they took off, 6 went one way, and 2 the other, but Joe and I missed them all. We were mostly on main forest roads, but once we got to Hwy 191, we had pavement for about 8 miles. We had a real nice lunch at the resort there, enjoyed our first blue skies of the week.
Across the road from the resort is a nice meadow that Jeff said used to have elk grazing in it. But since the 2011 Wallow fire, the elk have formed different habits. And this year, with all the lush meadows and water everywhere, apparently they don't move far from where they bed down. We sure haven't seen many.
There was a real nice bench, with matching chairs, on the porch of the lodge. Couldn't figure out how to pack this back on the quads, but it would be a nice place to sit and watch elk from across the road, if they ever showed up.
This ride took us past some beautiful scenery, including a river (I think it was the West Fork of the
Black Riveragain) and Beaver Creek. We saw some interesting concrete formations which I believe are used as water diversions to keep from washing out the road. Never seen anything like these before.
You can see that Beaver Creek cut quite a swath through here. And it was running.
We kept seeing little patches of some kind of red flowers under some of the pine trees. I finally took a picture but it doesn't do it justice. It was a nice, colorful patch in the green meadow.
Finally, we got to see some antelope. Brenda spotted a herd of about 16, so we got to stop and watch them for a while.
We had left our better pair of binoculars at the RV because they had gotten moisture in them, so Joe dug out our back-up set. But, alas, there was a malfunction. However, he was able to re-engineer them so we at least got a look at the antelope.
We've seen lots of nice aspen groves up here, some pretty young trees but lots of older ones that didn't get destroyed in the fire. I would love to come back when their leaves turn this fall.
As we neared the campground, I took one last picture of these beautiful meadows here. To me, this is the prettiest part of our beautiful state, which has so many different looks. We are really anxious to get home, but this was a nice way to end our long summer trip.
Today's ride was 80.5 miles, and Joe's gas tank was flashing empty. Mine also said "empty" but it hadn't started flashing yet. We spent almost 8 hours in the saddle, including an hour stop for lunch at Hanagan Meadow, so we could barely walk when we got back. But it didn't rain on us all day, and the temperature was good. Sometimes we had rainsuits on, but sometimes we took them off. Our dinner tonight was "clean out the fridge and eat the leftovers," so it didn't take too long to get that heated up. (Brenda did most of the cooking tonight, but I supervised.) We all deemed today as an Excellent Adventure, with the sunshine and the antelope as the highlights.
Jeff corrected me on the "bachelor butt herds." I mis-heard him. He said it was "bachelor buck herds," so I have since changed it.
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