Category Archives: Travel

Camping, Road Trip 2016

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

August 27, 2016 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I suppose I shouldn’t have a dislike of Aspen, but I do! First off, before even going, so many people said, oh, why go to Aspen? Well, we had our family reasons, but UGH after the bear attack…

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Read those first!

So we spent the day of the bear incident cleaning up. At first we’d thought we’d camp another night and then we realized that was crazy…the bear KNEW our car would have food and now it was even less secure. So we managed to crash at Louie’s dad’s place for a night, but frankly, we were cranky and tired and ready to leave.

The next morning we did, after loading up. We had breakfast at the Main Street Bakery, which would have been really nice except I suddenly wasn’t feeling well and ended up sitting outside on a bench for most of the meal. Altitude sickness? Definitely not morning sickness, which was what a woman at the “community table” suggested to me.

Louie and I were headed to Rocky Mountain National Park next. Yes, it was backtracking, but that’s how we did it. Don’t judge. We had a reservation for two nights at Moraine Campground, which was a different campground than we stayed at the previous year. We decided to leave Aspen via Independence Pass which is a pretty fantastic drive!

Things that are truly awful: the vault toilets at the parking lot for the top of Independence Pass.

I was starting to feel a bit better, but not great. Louie drove since I am terrified of mountain driving and he loves it. I won’t lie, some of our fun and excitement was gone. We were tired and stressed, we couldn’t use one of the doors of the car, and we were worried that another bear would attack the car. And now we were driving several hours back east to go somewhere that we didn’t even know if we wanted to go.

We’d been to Rocky Mountain National Park the year before and we’d figured why not return for another short visit. We’d really only have one full day there, but it seemed worth it in the planning stages. Naturally everything took longer than I planned (things to remember) but I think we were still happy, deep down Winking smile

We came into the park from the West side. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous. This was on the Trail Ridge Road, in case you are trying to recreate our trip. Oh, and I should mention, before getting to the park, we made a few stops along the way to try to get a new cooler, since the bear ruined ours. The day before we’d looked around Aspen for one, but everything was super expensive. We ended up buying a $4 styrofoam one to tide us over, figuring we’d easily find a cheaper one. That was a mistake. We saw a $350 cooler at Bed, Bath and Beyond…made the $75 cooler at the hardware store in Aspen look like a bargain! We finally found a reasonably priced one at a Target, but it was small. Oh well.

So we came in on the Trail Ridge Road from the West Side, like I started to tell you a minute ago. Most visitors enter the park on the East Side, so this was definitely the less crowded way to do it! The entrance gate was closed when we arrived so we didn’t get to flash our season pass. I guess probably we were supposed to show it somewhere but it was pretty unclear.

I wanted us to immediately get into tourist/photo taking mood, but it was hard. Louie was tired, I was tired, and we were just worried and stressed. We stopped and enjoyed the views (the Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved road in the US, I believe) but mostly we wanted to get to the campsite and possibly just go to sleep.

By 6:00 or so we got to the Moraine Campground. I’d booked us a “walk-in” site, which seemed like a good idea at the time—the description said you would have to walk a bit from your car to the campsite, which I figured gave more privacy and quiet. What we didn’t realized was that it was up a hill, not terribly private, and that there wasn’t a very convenient bear box (metal box bears can’t open for you to store your food.)

On the one hand, we had a great story. On the other hand, we didn’t want to leave any open food or scented items in the car and we were stressed. We managed to organize things and make room in a nearby bearbox, and we set up our tent, and finally relaxed a bit. Our plan was to get up very early and do a hike out of the Bear Lake Trailhead. Bear Lake is a very popular Trailhead, so we wanted to get there by 7 am or so.

So, we got up, had a quick breakfast, and got moving. People tend to get up early in campgrounds and this one was no exception. I’d slept okay, except I could hear a nearby person snoring! The privacy was not great. We were on the top of a little rocky hill, which was cool, but hard to get to the car or the bathroom!

There was a rainbow shortly after we arrived though, which was very pretty.

Oh, and a raven or magpie ate one of our sandwiches! I’d packed two and put them in baggies on the table…and when we weren’t looking a bird knocked one on the ground and pecked at it! So I had to pack another, but that was okay.

We got to the parking lot at the Trailhead quite early, maybe by 6:45/7 am. It was only 1/3 to 1/2 full, but by the time we were “geared up” and got our boots on the lot was full! There is a shuttle system you can use, but it didn’t seem terribly convenient from our campground so we wanted to drive if possible. And here’s where blogging a month later (almost) makes you forget things! I recall Louie drove in his pajamas to the trailhead to save time, but I don’t remember what time we got up, nor did I make a note of it. Oh well.

I’d selected the “4 lakes loop” for our day hike. It seemed like it covered a good bit of ground that we hadn’t hiked in the past and would be a gorgeous way to spend the day. We weren’t disappointed!

We “warmed up” by walking around Bear Lake first. It was very pretty and the air was nice and cool.

We had to do a bit of climbing to get to Nymph Lake, but it was very pretty with all the lilies. This part of the hike was pretty crowded with people, but we knew that would be the case. We did all the add on portions of the hike too: Bear, Nymph, Dream, Emerald (had a lovely snack in a private area near Emerald lake and rested for 20 minutes or so—it was nice to avoid people for a bit!), then Lake Haiyaha-the hike up to that lake was absolutely gorgeous with amazing views! After Lake Haiyaha we went to Mills Lake which was my favorite and went to Jewel Lake too, which was a little anticlimatic. We had lunch sitting by Mills Lake and rested for awhile. Louie walked around to an island nearby but I wasn’t up for going off path. After a long rest there we headed back down, past Alberta Falls (we’d been there the year before) and then a long uphill from the Glacier Gorge Trailhead back to Bear Lake and our car, which was still there and not re-attacked by Bears!

Anyway, as much as I’m terrible at describing hikes (or just not in the mood Winking smile /already forgot) it was a great hike! I think it took us about 7 hours with lots of stops, and we had a great time.

We got back to the camp and just relaxed for the rest of the day. One thing we didn’t see much of was WILDLIFE. The previous year we’d seen ton, but we just didn’t see much. (of course we’d had quite a lot of evidence of wildlife, but very few sightings.)

The next morning we got up early to head out. We were heading west to Grand Junction and Colorado National Monument. In the early hours of the morning we woke up to the sound of whooping and howling—we realized it was a bunch of coyotes making a lot of racket!

Anyway, it was a nice but short visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. I think I preferred our campground the year before (Glacier Basin) but it was nice to try something new. The bathrooms were pretty dirty and the dumpsters were overflowing! We had a nice fire each night though, and Colorado is just gorgeous.

This part of the trip was emotionally difficult for me. I felt like the bear had really stolen our excitement and happiness, and we were just worried what else would go wrong. I felt tired already and that I hadn’t planned well enough (it might be true, but still, I should have been enjoying the moment!) and that I was just worried more things would go wrong. 2016 has been one thing going wrong after another…but this was a vacation! No time for complaining, time for fun! (And rolling thermarest mattresses, so much rolling of mattresses.)

Camping days: 4

Hiking miles (best estimate): 22

Camping, Road Trip 2016

Bear Necessities

August 22, 2016 hannahviolin

You know how when you’re out in the woods you hear weird noises? We were camping on our second night in Aspen, and I woke up in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, to hearing somebody throwing a bag of ice around. I couldn’t tell if it was in our campsite or not! I lay there quietly, assuming it wasn’t, because that would be super weird. There was a lot of footsteps, but no noises, no talking, and I decided not to wake Louie up because I didn’t want him making noise. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anybody in our site, who would do that? Or we were getting robbed and I didn’t want the person to notice our tent, as there were no footsteps coming near. I heard somebody rattle what sounded like our bear box (that’s a box where you are supposed to keep your food) and then all was quiet, so I went back to sleep. I had a variety of dreams of waking up and finding that somebody had set their tent up next to ours!

We were in bear country. If you camp a lot, you know exactly what I mean. It seems that every campground has different rules. In Yellowstone they made you sign something agreeing—all your food must be kept in your trunk, all your toiletries that were scented also. No food, water, or scented toiletries (i.e. toothpaste, lotion, etc) in the tent with you. You had to wash your dishes in a certain sink, and make sure that all your trash was in special bear proof trashcans.

At the Difficult campground, they gave us our own bear box. And we usually kept a clean camp, put everything away. But there were a few things: one was that there wasn’t anywhere to wash dishes—they just told us to throw our water in the woods. And that the picnic table had a sign saying to put your things in your car.

Not only the bear box, but the car. The camp host had told us to use the box though…and laughed. But we had gotten “home” late and forgot to cover or move the cooler.

I woke up early, and got out of the tent to go to the toilet. I figured I’d see that everything was fine. But it wasn’t. The first thing I saw was shattered glass, and thought, OH MY GOD we’ve been robbed. And then I realized our car had been attacked by a bear.

The bear pulled the top of the car door down and removed the lid of the cooler and threw it on the ground. I started freaking out and yelled for Louie to get out of the tent and come see. We were both in total shock for a bit!

After awhile we started cleaning up. I was worried about the glass at first, but it was safety glass which mean it wasn’t as sharp as window glass would be. There was ice and melted water all over the backseat and the clothes. Most of the damage was on the window though, and nothing on the upholstery, thank goodness!

If you look you can see the dirty pawprint from the bear shaking this box. This is a bear box. If we had put our cooler in it we might not have had the bear attack. I do take the blame for it, but I’ll say this: I had never heard of this sort of thing happening before—I’d heard that bears would rip into soft top cars and tents, but not metal! I’d also add that the sign on the picnic table at the site says put food in the bear box or a locked car, which we did. And I’d also think that putting dishwater wherever you wanted would attract bears! So we were to blame, but there were other factors. And honestly, I think maybe people in tents shouldn’t camp at the Difficult Campground at all, and they should just say that. We found out later that another car was broken into and a “bear proof” cooler was broken into by the bear that night, and a few campers SAW the bear trying to break into their bear box.

(A google search found that a few years ago the problem at the campground was bad and they banned tents, but lifted the ban. I wonder if they told anyone after our attack?)

So here we were, at the beginning of a 3 week road trip, with a messed up car! We panicked for a few minutes, but then decided to try to do something. We had to drive into Aspen to make phone calls (nothing at the campsite available, no phone other than one for local calls which didn’t include 800 calls, and no pay phone) so we did that, carefully, and after checking with the insurance that it was allowed, Louie and I headed to a hardware store to try to fix up the window.

It ended up working really well. Louie managed to bend the metal back up, added plexiglass, and taped the whole thing with a combination of duct tape and gorilla tape. We realized pretty early that the entire door would need to be replaced, so putting tape on it wasn’t a concern.

We spent a few hours at the True Value in downtown Aspen working on it. The employees there were both really helpful and incredibly nosy too Smile Everybody kept coming out to see the car. People said that this kind of thing happened a lot (news to us, and I’ll bet to most of you) and that bears break glass doors, eat out of the trash, break into cars, etc. I ask, what is Aspen doing to help (the answer seems, very little) and I also ask, why don’t more people know about this? Honestly, we didn’t realize how bad the problem was, and we likely wouldn’t have camped. Maybe that’s why they don’t tell people? Or do they just think all towns have major bear problems? I don’t know!

I do know a few things; I won’t be camping there again, and we won’t be underestimating bears again.

We got the window fixed up though, by lunchtime (a waste of a morning, but it could have been worse!) and thankfully I’m dating an engineer who worked in remodeling and construction and knows how to make stuff work really well! And even though we wouldn’t be able to open that door for the rest of the trip, at least we didn’t have to cancel our trip.

So, that’s our “best” story from the trip. Our car got attacked by a bear. Oh, and he ate the rest of a bag of Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels, 2 apples, half a tub of hummus (left the rest), and even a beer. There was a can of beer that had a claw mark and had been drained. (Louie has a picture I know, but I don’t have it right now. I’ll share it later if I can find it from him!).

Sigh. What a day. But we weren’t hurt, and the upholstery wasn’t hurt, the insurance would cover it (minus the deductible) and the trip would continue!

Days camping: 2 night

Official hiking miles: 13.5

Road Trip 2016

And so it begins…to Aspen

August 18, 2016 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I love traveling. I love planning travel. AND I love writing about travel after the fact, but I’ll admit it’s the most daunting and perhaps the least fun part of it. This past trip was a doozy! How do I write about it? The best way, I suppose, is simply to put my fingers on the keyboard, have my photos at the ready, and GO!

So. We set out on a lovely Wednesday morning towards the end of July. My sister Carrie had been staying with me for a few days (we’d even gone on a float trip with her-it was a raincheck from Memorial Day that needed to be used) and she was staying behind for another day. Timing…but she was able to dog sit for a bit and then my friend April would be doing so afterwards (until she moved to DC, so sad!)

Louie and I planned to drive to Denver in one day. It’s a long drive, but possible. The following day we had reservations at the Difficult Campground in Aspen, so we wanted to get a good chunk of the drive behind us.

I’d been a little stressed out about my trip planning. I’d made a few rash decisions on camping reservations (based on availability and panic) and we were moving around nearly every night! I’d also really wanted to go back to Rocky Mountain NP for a few days, but then it ended up we wanted to be in Aspen for a few days to visit Louie’s dad, and then the timing got mixed up and our itinerary had us backtracking several hours. I have some regrets…but I’ll consider them things to learn from, and honestly, most of it worked out pretty well and we got to see more than we might have otherwise. But there were stressors, and things I was worried about, more so than in previous trips.

We’d tried to organize the trunk in a certain way, in order to facilitate staying organized. Over the next week or so things would solidify into a true plan, but there were some bumps. Here’s the trunk starting out!

Note: car camping for three weeks out of a Toyota Corolla is a challenge. Plus I’d purchased some of my favorites from Trader Joe’s, since I didn’t think we’d encounter any of those along the way, and it took up a fair amount of room. The backseat had the cooler, various shoes, all the clothes, backpacks, and camp chairs. Here you see the food, dishes, stove, sleeping bags, and the tent and sleeping pads (thermarests) are in there too. There are three bins with different categories: food, food prep, and non food prep.

Anyway! A tradition of driving to Colorado is stopping in Kansas City at Arthur Bryant’s for barbecue. On the one hand, I’ve become mostly a pescatarian. On the other hand, I said mostly.

I had the burnt end sandwich with beans and it didn’t disappoint. And the pickles! I am such a pickle lover. Why, yes, I’m waxing poetic over the pickles on a barbecue platter.

Anyway, the day went by uneventfully. Missouri goes by quickly, Kansas takes longer. And then there’s that part of Colorado that really just seems like it should be Kansas.

The wind farms are always fun to drive by, and we were just pumped up to finally be on vacation and hitting the road. It’s been a hard year, a stressful year, and we keep trying to get away and relax. Spoiler: we didn’t relax on this trip, but we did get away.

We’d hoped to find a cheap hotel in the Denver area but failed. I wanted to have a chill night of oh, let’s just walk into a place that looks good, as one would have on a road trip 30 years ago. But I instead started to panic and ended up spending way too much on a terrible Motel 6 near the airport. Oh, and we had dinner at McDonald’s along the way and got to watch part of the DNC…doesn’t that seem so long ago? McDonald’s has “fish” sandwiches, which are actually pretty terrible, but not too bad for food on the road I guess.

The morning came and with it, a nearby Denny’s. When the calorie counts are listed on the menu you find yourself ordering things like fruit and whole wheat pancakes.

This guy was both creepy and a little adorable. 60/40? 30/70? Anyway, then we hit the road. Into the mountains of Colorado we went!

On the way to Aspen Louie’s dad recommended we try a hike called the Shrine Pass hike, which is just on this side of Vail. He described it as “easy” so we forgot that 8000-10000 feet of altitude requires some adjustment. I was getting visually a bit blurry after we went through the Eisenhower Tunnel, and was super thirsty and a bit headachy…this should have told me something. In a nutshell, the hike was extremely challenging. I was short of breath and felt terrible! I should tell readers that I spent two summers in Breckenridge at a music festival, and firstly, I love the area: Breckenridge is like heaven, and secondly, altitude is no joke. It can take a few days to adjust, and one at mile high wasn’t enough.

The hike was probably really beautiful (it was, really) but I was feeling pretty awful and it was too hard. 4.2 miles round trip.

After the hike we hit the road again towards Aspen. We had a reservation for 3 nights at the Difficult Campground, a few miles from the town of Aspen. Louie’s dad was working there for a bit and he wasn’t sure if he would have room for us to stay with him.

This raccoon was posing and begging for us, but we know better than to feed wild animals. Well…mostly.

We got to the campsite and had to set up the tent and everything, and then he came to pick us up for dinner.

We set up the tent towards the back of the site.

It’s hard doing things normally while camping. For instance: our campsite didn’t have flush toilets, only vault toilets and water out of a spigot. So we couldn’t shower or freshen up for a dinner out very well. When you are camping and hiking and only around other people doing the same things, this isn’t a big deal, but when you are hanging out with people who are staying in a real house with running sinks and showers and wearing regular clothes, it’s odd. I had to reconcile myself to the fact that I wasn’t as put together as I would have liked to be, but the dinner sure was delicious.

The next morning we took a hike that left right near the campsite, called the Difficult Trail.

The description of it, in an old book, said that it was 3 miles one way and that there was a point where the trail wasn’t maintained anyway, but you could pick your way through for awhile. The trail was quite steep at first, but it was really nice, shady and in the woods.

Lots of boulders and trees and cool stuff to look at. We had a few times where we had to climb over some logs and follow cairns but didn’t think too much of it until the trail ran out entirely, and we realized it seemed we’d gone about 4.5 miles!

So I think we actually hiked all the way to the end of the UNmaintained part before heading back: I’ll say 9 miles RT. It was nice though, and then we met up with Louie’s dad and wife, and walked around Aspen for a bit. We’d thought about having dinner at the campground due to their work schedule, but ended up having a later dinner at their condo. We didn’t get “home” until nearly 11 pm and were exhausted: that’s very late for camping since the sun tends to wake you up early!

So that’s enough of the first post here. Our plan for the next day was to wake up early and do another hike. I want to keep track of our hiking mileage too.

Hiking so far: 13.5 miles

Days camping: 2 nights

Travel

Home Glorious Home

August 17, 2016 hannahviolin

I got home late yesterday afternoon from an epic 3 week road trip. I’ll be writing LOTS about it in the upcoming weeks, as you all know how long trip recaps can take. It was full of adventure, good and bad, but Louie and I survived, thrived, and explored so many amazing parts of our country. I’m in recovery! After the trip we had so much unpacking to do, and so much laundry. Today I’ve been relearning the violin, working on my fall schedule, and responding to many hours worth of emails. Self employment, you guys. It’s a tough world!

I don’t regret taking three weeks off to see the world though, and I’ll gladly do it again next week. I have so many pictures to show you, so many amazing hikes and drives to write about, and a bunch of mishaps, mistakes, and misadventures as well. Next trip will be a slower pace, but this one was a blast.

We saw Aspen, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado National Monument, Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse State Park, Arches National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Kodachrome State Park, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park (North Rim), Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Recreation Area, and Antelope Canyon. Those were the big stops! We drove around 3000 miles, many of them incredibly scenic. We camped for 14 nights in 11 different campsites in 10 different campgrounds, many of them incredibly scenic. We hiked many miles…maybe I’ll add them up somehow.

And as I’m looking at my pictures, I’m already saying, why didn’t I take more pictures of this or that. As always! You can never take too many pictures.

How are you doing? What have you been up to in the last three weeks??

Travel

Getting ready to hit the road

July 22, 2016 hannahviolin 1 Comment

There are a few things happening. One: my youngest sister Carrie is coming to visit. Two: Louie and I are getting ready to embark on a 3 week road trip. Three: Continuing to work, of course, as vacation doesn’t start early when you have 3 weeks of it coming up.

So it’s busy times, and lots of list making. I use the “to-do” list on my iPhone to keep track of things. When I think of something, I put it on the list, and then when I have a few minutes, or longer, I check the list to see if there’s anything on there I can do and get checked off. I get a huge sense of satisfaction each time I check something off, and I get to keep track of everything.

We went to Tower Taco last night for dinner. I got a vegetarian burrito and it was HUGE. It was also pretty good and I have half of it left for lunch, which I shall eat in a few minutes.

This week teaching has been pretty easy, and I’ve been taking it easier on practicing. I still have been doing some, but it’s hard to put in the time when you know you’re going on a vacation. Of course, the fact that I’m going on a trip and won’t play for 3 weeks is exactly WHY I should still be practicing…haha. I struggle with many of the same issues my students do!

I had to take my car in for a tire repair yesterday. There’s a shop I go to that is less than a mile from my house—convenient because you can run or walk to it. I ran home (took a longer route) and was a sweaty mess by the time I got back. It probably took nearly 30 minutes after my shower before I really felt cooled off. So I didn’t want to walk back to the shop later. I took an uber from my house. It felt a little lazy, but it was nearly 110 with the heat index. My uber driver told me that he had been playing Pokemon Go at Tower Grove Park before getting my request. I’m torn on this game. I don’t play it, but I guess it’s nice that a game is getting people out and about? But then again, I hope they can appreciate getting out and seeing the world on the level of, hey, look at all this world out here to explore! I guess if a game starts that, then it’s great. I don’t know.

I’m super bummed because my friend April is moving to DC for the fall semester. She’s in grad school and it’s a sort of internship, and she’ll be gone the whole fall. She’s one of my go-to friends for fun activities, and she’s often up for hiking, running races, and doing various other activities. She’s also a wonderful friend to talk to, is so sweet and caring, and has been there for me through some tough times. I’ll miss her a ton! We are going to see a movie on Art Hill tonight (another activity! which involves bringing a picnic, which has been a minor theme of the summer) and though it’ll be really hot and humid, I’m still looking forward to it.

And then tomorrow I have 3 weddings, one is outside (ah, the heat!), and then Carrie is here. Carrie is my youngest sister and she lives in New York City. She’s just finished grad school and is quite a bit younger than me. Louie and I realized that we had a rain check for a canoe trip from the cancelled Memorial Day trip so the 3 of us are doing a float trip on Sunday.

You might not hear from me again for awhile, I’m not sure. Don’t worry, I’m just on a road trip. We are going to Aspen, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado National Monument, Arches NP, Canyonlands NP, Capitol Reef NP, Kodachrome State Park, Bryce NP, Zion NP, Grand Canyon North Rim, Antelope Canyon, and Las Vegas, NM. If you have any hike or must see suggestions, let me know in the comments or email! I have all of our reservations for camping made and most general plans, but there is still room for things, and choices must be made. It would be nice to not have to have all the reservations made, but it seems like in order to camp in the parks, you really have to plan ahead. Some of my reservations have been made for over 4 months! In any case, I’m super excited to see some new places, to revisit some places I’ve already been, and to spend 3 weeks traveling and hiking and camping and enjoying the great outdoors, and enjoying the wonderful National Parks!

Hiking

Lone Elk Park

June 14, 2016 hannahviolin 1 Comment

I can’t believe it’s Tuesday already. This summer is flying by! This week I am helping out at the Community Music School’s String Camp. I’ve done this for a few years (I think this is my third year) and it continues to be a fun activity. Each day I give a 45 minute sectional to each of the three different orchestras. I try to make it enjoyable for the students as well as informative! (A sectional is when the orchestra divides into parts, so I teach either the 1st and 2nd violins together, or just one of those sections.)

I’ve done a few interesting things since we last spoke. Thursday night I went to see Opera Theatre St Louis perform Ariadne. Louie and I got a good deal on tickets to two shows as part of the “Young Friends” subscription. For those “young” people under 45, you get dinner, drinks, and a show all for about $40. We had to commit to two shows, so we have another coming up that I’m really looking forward to. The dinner was a buffet style dinner outside under a tent, and we chatted with another couple beforehand. It was open seating at dinner and we tried to be friendly, but we were joined at a table for 8 by 4 other people who knew each other already and didn’t even say hello to us, which is frankly kind of rude at an event. Especially when two of those people were wearing badges saying that they were “hosts” of the event! But, we had a good time nonetheless, and the opera was fun. The first act was stronger than the second act, plot wise, and I would have preferred to hear it sung in German, but otherwise it was a wonderful performance. Maybe someday Winter Opera will have the same budget!

And then on Sunday Louie and I were going to do a long hike, but the weather was super hot and I didn’t sleep well and we wanted to take it easy and leave Mackenzie (the dog) at home—she gets hot easily and has been having more hair issues too. So we decided to go to Lone Elk Park. Lone Elk Park (listed in the 60 hikes book!) is a place that doesn’t allow pets, EVEN in the car, because there is wildlife and BISON. BISON! HERE IN ST LOUIS.

I only learned this last year after our trip, which made me super excited, but I hadn’t had a good opportunity to visit. First we did a 3.5 mile hike on the White Basin Trail, The hike was very nice and had a variety of terrain. It was really hot but the trail was mostly shaded, and easy to follow. There were a few trees to climb over. We passed two other hikers who told us they’d seen a bunch of elk, so we kept our eyes open, but didn’t see any on our hike, only lots of squirrels and chipmunks.

After finishing the hike, we got in the car, turned on the a/c, had some snacks, and went to drive all around the park. First we did see a whole bunch of elk!

There were quite a few females or young elk, hanging out by the road. It seemed like their fur was shedding. They didn’t seem to pay us much attention.

And then we drove through the bison area. Louie and I are old hat at looking for wildlife while driving slowly, and we were in luck. Oh, right before we turned to the bison road we saw a male elk from a distance as well! Too far for a picture without a good zoom lens though. So the bison seem to be kept in a certain area, and the signs warn you not to get out of your car at all.

We weren’t disappointed. It only took a few minutes until we saw them. Maybe 5-6 of them up a hill in a shady area, pretty far away, but one closer, that we stopped and watched for a few minutes.

He got closer too, and we were ready to drive away if needed, but he also seemed more concerned with eating grass than anything, so we just enjoyed watching the strange creature. I could be wrong but they seemed smaller than the ones at Yellowstone?

In any case, it was a delightful afternoon, and so unique. I want to go back! Oh, and we saw a couple of friendly raccoons, who came up to the car. I assume people feed them, but we didn’t.

Look at that guy with his weird toes!

I definitely recommend you check out Lone Elk Park if you like animals! It was a really neat experience. The hike wasn’t super exciting, but it was pleasant, and NOT difficult—the signs at the parking lot say “difficult”. I’d say “intermediate” in that there are some up and downs, but in the sense that “easy” would be a flat paved walk.

This week: teaching, practicing, getting ready for Leslie and Athena to visit next week (!!!!), another Opera, and, weather permitting, Shakespeare. Plus a few dinners with friends. I’m tired just thinking about it Winking smile

HANNAHVIOLIN

Category Archives: Travel

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Bear Necessities

And so it begins…to Aspen

Home Glorious Home

Getting ready to hit the road

Lone Elk Park

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.

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thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.