Vacation: Day 11 - Grand Circle...

We made a grand circle today, starting by driving to Silverton, then up Stony Pass all the way through to state 149, then north to Lake City, and over the Cinnamon Pass back to Animus Forks and then to Silverton and back to Ouray.  It was a long, long day on the road: 13 hours in all.  But it was a fantastic day for scenery, wildflowers, and wildlife.  Also great: by choosing this out-of-the-way destination, we avoided almost all of the July 4th hordes.  We didn't see any beavers, but we saw dozens of beaver ponds and their lodges, as in the photo at right...

None of the wildlife we saw were close enough for a decent photo.  The highlight of the whole day was two separate viewings of fawns and their mothers.  First was a doe with twins that looked to be a few days old at most.  It was still early when Debbie spotted them, around 7 am, and we were able to watch them without interference by other people for 15 minutes or so. The doe was browsing on willow leaves while the fawns alternated between nursing, playing, and lying hidden under a willow bush.   When the doe finally moved off out of sight, we drove down the road for about five minutes and Debbie spotted another doe with a fawn.  This time the fawn was even younger – wobbly on its feet, and the doe was still cleaning it off.  We're guessing that this fawn was close to newborn.  Delighted, we watched the two of them for another ten minutes or so, until they moved off into the willows.  Beautiful.

As if that wasn't good enough, we also saw lots of other wildlife.  Deer were especially easy to spot; we saw perhaps 20 of them today.  One sighting (other than the fawns!) particularly stands out: an adult fording a large and raging stream, making it look effortless.  We saw dozens and dozens of chipmunks, but one caught our eye as looking a bit odd, and we got it in our binoculars – it was a mother chipmunk carrying a baby.  It looked a lot like the marmot mother we saw carrying a baby.  We saw several marmots, including one crazy marmot that ran straight toward us and ducked under a rock just a few feet away.  A pika showed himself, and we saw pine siskins feeding on dandelion seeds.  We even sighted a couple of mountain bluebirds (seeing anything other than robins and white-crowned sparrows is unusual enough to record!).  To top it all off, on our way up Cinnamon Pass (from the Lake City side), Debbie spotted three adult Rocky Mountain Goats, over a half mile away and 1,000 feet higher than us.  We were able to watch them for over a half hour, with stabilized binoculars.  It was even better viewing than the first group she spotted a few days ago, though this time there was no baby.  These goats were shedding their winter coat and looked distinctly grubby.  While we were watching the goats, something like five or six vehicles and three hikers passed us.  Only one vehicle had any curiousity at all about why we were standing next to the road staring up at a distant mountain with binoculars.  That carload was very interested, and jumped at our offer to show them the goats.  Debbie even shouted an offer to view the goats to a couple of passing cars, but they weren't interested.  Sad...

The dogs had a great time today, too.  We let them out to go bounding around a knoll at 12,000 feet south of Stony Pass – what joy and happiness!  Race in particular loves to look around out the open window as we're four-wheeling around.  His nose is going a mile a minute, which surprised both Debbie and I, as he's never before shown much interested in scenting...

Midway through the day, we passed through Lake City (east of Ouray, across the mountains).  It's a tiny little resort town, very old-fashioned in appearance and spirit.  We stopped at a local BBQ diner that had takeout and got a couple of burgers – outstanding.  The town had some kind of a shindig going, involving an amplified announcer and lots of hooting and hollering.  We're guessing a rodeo, but we don't know for sure.  Lots of homes had red-white-and-blue bunting up, and every home and business was flying American flags.  We saw quite a few locals dressed up for the holiday as Uncle Sam or other patriotic characters.  We felt almost like we'd gone back in time to the '40s or '50s, except that cell phones worked and there was an espresso joint in town...

Here are the plant and flower photos from the day: