Moosetastic Weekend

This weekend was full of new animal friends.  First we saw a nice lady moose at Kincaid Park.  Kincaid Park is over by the airport on the west side of town.  It's full of excellent hiking trails (good for cross country skiing in the winter) and, according to something I read once (reliable, I know) it's home to more moose than anywhere else in the city.  In the summer we encountered a number of tourists out hunting moose with their cameras.  I think we've seen moose there almost every time we've been out there, and we've definitely seen more and more since it's gotten colder.  Here's one we saw on Saturday:

I took that picture from the car with my phone.  As much as I absolutely LOVE moose, I'm also quite afraid of them, so I'd never get that close to one without being in the car (or having Andy between me and the moose).

On the way out of the park, we saw some more - a mama and two babies.  Because we were driving on the road, I was only able to snap a quick photo of two of them, and the sun was in my eyes so...yeah, not the best picture:

Mama and one of the babies

So we saw four moose on Saturday, which was really cool because the most I'd ever seen before was two together.  I guess we're really getting to the time when they're coming out of the woods to look for food.

This morning we headed up to Flattop.  I had such a nice walk with Ripley on Thursday that I wanted to take Andy to see all the snow.  I'm really glad he suggested we take the camera.

Perfect (but VERY COLD) day with the sun just peeking over the mountains.

We made Ripley wear the coat:

As we walked down the powerline pass trail, we caught sight of a moose on the other side of the creek having a drink.  See?

Upon closer inspection, there were SIX of them.  Can you spot them all??

Since there was a small river between the moose and the three of us, I grabbed the camera and decided to head toward the river and see how close I could get.  Andy kept Ripley back by the trail so he wouldn't scare the moose away. (Though me crashing through the bushes was probably pretty terrifying).

On the way I followed some moose tracks and found a spot where one bedded down recently.  Doesn't look very comfortable, does it?

As I got closer, the two moose up the hill ran off, but I got a good view of the other four!

Moose make really cool footprints - they look like palmiers, don't they? (if you don't know what a palmier is, go here)  ...and now I want a cookie.

When I got back from checking out the moose, and reassured Ripley that I wasn't running away (he was very upset that I walked away from him), Andy got artsy with the camera.  As you can see, the light was amazing this morning:

See his little beardsicles? Isn't he handsome?  Also, do you see that his coat has a little collar that folds over? How unnecessarily adorable is that?

Hope you enjoyed the moose! Happy Sunday!