Estes Park, CO

Today was our first full day in Colorado. Estes Park was the destination of the day. I’ve had a bunch of “first time ever” experiences, and of course we took pictures. The most fun ones were about us interacting with some wild and not so wild life of Estes Park.

First encounter was with a bunch of funny little chipmunks (or at least we think they were chipmunks). At first when we stopped on this scenic overlook there was not a single one of these to be found. However the non-stop tourists have trained them well. Within the first minute the chipmunks started popping up from everywhere, running not away from us, but towards us! They don’t seem to be afraid of people, and know well that people mean some free food. We had some sunflower seeds with us, and none of them hesitate to grab those right from the palms of our hands.

Two of them were exceptionally funny. One was very greedy. When his “comrades” would take a bit of seeds and run to hide them somewhere this little guy was intent on taking all our supplies at once. The size of his head has probably doubled in the process, yet he wouldn’t stop trying to stick more of the seeds into his mouth. Eventually I had to stick a camera so close into his little face that he ran off.

The other one was not any less greedy, but much more confused one. Apparently when we found him he has found some good supply of some weird cotton, and his mouth was full of that stuff. Then he saw sunflower seeds. It was a hard choice to make – leave the cotton, and get the seeds, or keep the cotton and skip on the feeds. I guess he figured he can do both. It was hilarious watching this little guy taking all the cotton out of his mouth, trying to fit in some seeds, seeing that it doesn’t work, stick the cotton back into his mouth and repeat. I think he decided to stick with the cotton after all.

After that we went onto a ranch to take a horse back ride up the mountains. This was the “biggest” new thing for me. The ride took about an hour and the experience was interesting. Sometimes it would get scary when my horse wouldn’t handle the way I expected it would handle. When I wanted it to go straight it would stop, when I wanted it to stop it would turn left, and so on. But we managed to get back alive, and that’s good enough for me! I can’t say that I loved the ride, but it was something new, and was definitely worth experiencing. Now I can say that I’ve done that.

And closer towards the end of the day we’ve run into a big heard of elk. We took a bunch of pictures of them as well. They seem to be in some transition winter to summer stage, so they don’t look their best, but they still do look funny. All in all it was a great fun day.