Kootenai Valley, Bonners Ferry
The mustard is in bloom in Bonners Ferry. I think we can all get excited about that. I’m not sure why they grow mustard here. There must be some reason, though, because there is a lot of it. We went driving through the valley of the Kootenai River north of Bonners Ferry, and this is what we saw.
Strip of fluorescent yellow mustard glowing in the sun
Canada? Where’s the line on the ground designating the international boundary? I assumed the border would be etched into the landscape.
More views from the levee
Giant field o’ mustard
What I love about cats....
One of the things I love about cats is their innate dignity. My cat seems to have completely lost out on this character trait. The only thing she seems to share with the Great Sisterhood of Other Cats is her ability to contort herself into a seriously uncomfortable shape while remaining totally relaxed.
Congress, AZ
What can I say about Congress? It is one of hundreds of old mining towns in Arizona, and it feels like most old mining towns: gritty and a bit depressing. There was a mine in Congress (predictably called the Congress Mine) which may or may not have been active. The buildings looked pretty decrepit and I could find no record of active mining there on-line, but there were signs by the gate instructing all visitors to check in at the office and labeling a separate entrance for deliveries. Hm. Since it was at the height of the COVID19 closures, nobody was around so I couldn’t inquire about the status of the mine.
About a half-mile from the mine was the only thing I could find of much interest (besides the usual heaps of barren tailings), and that was the old Congress cemetery, which you can see below. There were many marked graves but almost no markers/headstones to tell us whose graves they were. Of the markers there were, most were for young children.
Sunset near Yuma
Ah, there have been so many gorgeous sunsets in the desert that I hardly bother to photograph them anymore…but this one was special enough to deserve a spot on my memory card.
Carlsbad Caverns
Carlsbad Caverns are typical limestone caves with typical limestone cave rock formations. They just happen to be very large. They are also well-lit (for caves), and have a paved trail running through them, which is a big deal when you consider the rough terrain inside a cave. Portions of the caves are even accessible to wheelchair users.
Another great feature of Carlsbad Caverns is the fact that the National Park Service has thoughtfully provided railings along most of the (paved) trail. That railing is the only thing that made it possible for me to walk the 2 mile trail without smashing myself to bits by tottering into walls and rock features or falling over 25 times.
I am proud of the photos I managed to take inside the caverns, not because they are in any way unique (like most of my photos, they are the same stuff everyone else takes pictures of) but because I took them without a tripod by leaning on walls and railings and holding my breath while I snapped.
This is not a Carlsbad Cavern. It is a Native homesite in the park on the way to the caverns.
This is the ‘natural’ entrance to the cavern. It is natural in comparison to the elevator from the Visitor Center which drops you straight into the cave.
There are something like 3 or 4 miles of electrical wire running through the caves so they can light up some of the interesting features. Of course, if they did not do this there would be little point in going into the caves at all. ‘Dark’, as experienced in a cave, takes on a whole new meaning. It really doesn’t get any darker than that.
These look sort of like laser-cut trees that grow from the top down. Which, I suppose, could be explained by the fact that they DO grow from the top down.
Giant cave-fang
More cave teeth
This looks like a decorative, wrought-iron grille
Fantasmagoria
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
When I reached Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I thought ‘Whew! I’m finally back in my photographic element’. Or maybe not. GSMNP is a wonderful place, as you can see from the pictures below. It’s very different from other National Parks I have visited, though.
I took a great many pictures at GSMNP that look similar to these. Why would I do such a thing? Because THIS is what passes for a vista at GSMNP. I hiked up into the mountains (ok, not all that far since I can’t hike well anymore) hoping to break out into a clearing where I could actually SEE the Great Smoky Mountains, and all I saw was this: hilly shapes vaguely visible through heavy trees.
Another different thing about GSMNP was the Artifacts of Civilization that loomed over the park like the shadow of the Grim Reaper. These are ruins of hunting lodges (and actual hunting lodges are there as well, in fact, a whole village of them).
In many places it wasn’t all that easy to shoot around the Looming Hand. I had to go to some trouble to exclude the ruins looming over this very stream, and it only works if you overlook the old spring house sitting smack dab in the middle of the photo. Everywhere I went there was an old logging railroad grade or an old house or homesite or something. A lot of the western parks seem to have been formed to preserve natural features, while GSMNP came later, after logging and hunting and summer houses and what-have-you had already been built.
Little stream close to the campground
These are ruins too, although you cannot see them because they are so ruined they don’t exist anymore. This is an old homesite.
More ruins. The bridge is still here but the house is a broken foundation (which I ignored and did not photograph because it wasn’t attractive). Because of the heavy tree cover and frequently overcast weather, the light at GSNMP was what you might call ‘subdued’. Or gloomy.
It was not until I left the park that I actually SAW the Great Smoky Mountains. There is a scenic roadway that is a separate parklet from which you get (finally) the vistas I was craving. Here are some views from the scenic drive. I thought I took these on Thanksgiving day, but I later discovered that I didn't know when Thanksgiving was and I was off by a week. Strangely, given the fact that traffic in the town near the park entrance was so horrible I practically had an anxiety attack trying to jockey my ginormous RV through it, the parkway was utterly deserted.
Is this why they call them “Smoky” mountains? Enquiring minds want to know….
There’s water back there somewhere, in the smoky distance
Library of Congress
While in the WDC area, I toured the Library of Congress, where one of my nieces works. I had thought I would go to the Smithsonian again because one cannot see too much of the Smithsonian, and indeed, I still have not seen all the museums comprising the Smithsonian.
However, my niece recommended that we tour the Library of Congress, so we did. I might have been vaguely aware that the Library of Congress existed, but I had no idea it could be toured, or that there would be anything there to see if one did tour it.
It turns out that the LOC is a building in the Rococo style (again, not aware that existed?) and it is chock-full of representational art and statuary. After touring the LOC, I can tell you that I don’t care for representational art, not because it isn’t decorative and beautiful but because it is like drowning in a sea of incomprehensible details. It is like studying organic chemistry…thousands of random facts that simply have to be memorized because there is no rhyme or reason to them, no system that binds them all together into a comprehensible whole.
Everywhere you look in the entire building there are depictions of…STUFF. The twelve Social Virtues, for instance, represented by twelve giant paintings of ladies in flowing robes holding tablets or staffs or books or scepters and wearing golden circlets and medallions and such. There’s no making any sense of it. Everything MEANS something. There are representations of the branches of knowledge and philosophy and Industry and mathematics and heaven-only-knows-what-all. Apparently the artists who painted all of it used their wives as inspiration for the bazillion ladies that represent every thought that ever wafted across human consciousness. Every square inch of the walls and ceilings (and windows) are jammed with this stuff. It’s all very ornate. I didn’t take very many photos because it was totally overwhelming, and I would have melted my camera into a puddle of goo taking thousands of pictures whose meanings I couldn’t remember if you put a gun to my head. I took about three pictures, and here they all are to give you a flavor of what is in the building. I recommend you see it for yourself, as it’s quite an impressive sight even if it gives you a headache, as it did me.
They also have a Gutenberg Bible there, which is pretty cool.
Enormous mural (with gold leaf tiles) depicting something lofty and inspiring…Truth, maybe? Liberty? Wisdom? I forget.
Lovely stained-glass skylights. The triangular paintings underneath are (of course) representational. I think Aristotle’s name is on one of those plaques, so maybe they are all philosophers?
Yeah…no idea what these paintings are. I didn’t know when I took the picture because by this time my eyes were glazed over and I had a migraine. They might be the Types of Industry or Fields of Human Endeavor or some such. And the triangles might be publishing companies. I know there were publishing companies depicted somewhere on the ceiling.
Finally something I recognize! This is the Gutenberg Bible.
Gettysburg
The second scenic place I went was the Gettysburg battlefield. The entire battlefield (a whole series of battlefields, actually) is something like 10 miles around and it takes hours to see it.
So here is the strange thing about the battlefield. Having recently read an account of the battle which went into great detail about the tactical advantages of ‘high ground’ and the various ‘ridges’ upon which the armies were deployed, I had formed a mental picture of…you know…actual RIDGES. HIGH GROUND. Only to arrive at the battlefield and see THIS. What we are standing on is a ‘ridge’, actually a gentle, almost undetectable swelling of the ground. We are looking toward another ridge, in this case, Seminary Ridge. The brick building with the dome on top is part of the seminary and was in existence at the time of the battle.
I know!! WHAT ridge? After driving around for two solid days from ridge to ridge, I finally was able to (sort of, mostly) determine what was a ridge and what wasn’t, but when I first got out of the car and read a sign talking about Oak Ridge, I was utterly mystified.
Now here is some high ground that is actually recognizable as being high. We are standing on a practically non-existent ridge (I forget which one) and looking toward Little Round Top. LRT was the scene of one of the many heroic engagements that comprised the battle of Gettysburg. The Union army, which was occupying the ridge adjacent to LRT, had inexplicably left LRT undefended. An officer discovered this and sent troops to the hill a scant 15 minutes before Confederate soldiers came charging down from Big Round Top to take LRT and, from there, roll-up the entire Union line. The entire hill is covered with monuments to various regiments on both sides…a few are visible in this picture.
Now we are on Little Round Top looking toward Devil’s Den and the Slaughter Pen. Yeah, nice names, huh? It gives you an idea of just how dreadful the battle was. All those rocks are Devil’s Den and the low strip of shrubs in front of them is the Slaughter Pen. What more needs to be said? A lot of blood was shed and a lot of people died here. It was gory and disgusting and tragic.
I can imagine what you are thinking. Why are we looking at a giant, amorphous black blob covering a picture of the view from Little Round Top? Well, what appears to be a giant, amorphous blob is actually important documentary evidence of the natural fauna on LRT. It so happens that there were millions of ladybugs flying around there, and this blob is one that landed on my camera lens when I was trying to photograph LRT.
This is the Slaughter Pen, with LRT in the background. It looks so peaceful and idyllic, doesn’t it? It’s hard to imagine the death, destruction and oceans of blood that gave it its name.
This gorgeous tree is on Seminary Ridge in the midst of the seminary that gives the ridge its name. I struggled with Gettysburg because the things I really like to take pictures of are landscapes. Here I was in the middle of about a thousand inspiring monuments, statues, memorial plaques and battle memorabilia of all sorts, and all I can see are the trees and the sky. Plus a few quaint old farms. So a disproportionate number of the approximately 100 photos I came away with are landscapes. I have Seminary Ridge landscapes, Clump of Trees landscapes, Little Round Top landscapes, Oak Hill landscapes…and so on and so on. No important generals on great bronze horses, no tear-jerking memorials lauding fallen heroes…just landscapes.
Look, another landscape! This one is looking toward Cemetery Hill. By the time we got here it was late in the afternoon, and I simply could not resist trying to capture the light and shadows lying across the hill.
This is the Clump of Trees. How it got its name no one knows. I will leave that to you to determine. It is probably a metaphor for some deep and arcane spiritual truth exemplified by this portion of the battlefield. In any case, you will note that there is a cannon under the trees, so this is not solely a landscape. I think we can all get excited about that.
This is a fence. It happens to be near the High Water Mark, which where the Confederate army reached its point of maximum penetration of the Union line, and in fact, almost overran that line. The only Union presence was a regiment from Maine(?) of 430 or so men. General Hancock (Union) pointed at the Confederate colors being carried by the charging troops and ordered the Maine regiment to ‘take those colors’. The regiment charged the Confederates — 95% of them perished in the ensuing fight. General Hancock later said that he would have sent the regiment in even if he knew that every last one of them would be killed, for they delayed the Confederate charge by about 10 minutes, allowing additional Union troops to rush to the scene and repulse the Confederate advance. The whole story of Gettysburg consists of these kinds of stories of desperate courage and sacrifice on both sides. You can’t come away from it without being moved.
In typical VT fashion, though, instead of photographing the imposing statue of General Hancock that sits at the High Water Mark or the memorial for the Maine regiment, or the other memorial for their Confederate opponents, or the statue of the Confederate officer who led the attack, I was looking in the opposite direction at this fence line, which as far as I know did not exist during the Civil War and had nothing to do with the battle. I like it because it conveys the surreal tranquility and gentle beauty of the area…so bizarre to think of a hideous battle raging in the midst of this lovely, rolling farmland. You would think the worst thing that ever happened here was a bad case of tomato blight or a swarm of grasshoppers — and even that seems like an insult to the peaceful land warming itself in the sun.
The final stop on the Gettysburg battlefield tour is the cemetery. While everyone else, very properly, was hustling into the cemetery to pay their respects to the fallen before sunset, I was wandering around outside the gate, captivated by the beautiful trees. I just can’t help it.
And here is the cemetery itself. I have to admit that I am fond of cemeteries. They are usually lovely and peaceful, and this one is no exception; in fact, it is especially lovely and peaceful.
It's Good to be Back....Sort of....
Although few pictures have been posted, the VT has traveled extensively in the last several months. Unfortunately, much of that travel was to areas that weren't all that scenic. However, there were a few high points, and here is the first of them: the Potomac River.
What’s that you say? It doesn’t look like a river? The river is over to the left. It may be outside the picture frame, but it IS there. This little dog (whose name is Wicket) has the longest tongue in the smallest mouth ever.
For purists who INSIST on seeing actual water when they view pictures of a river, here is the river. We are near the mouth of the river here and you can see it is enormous.
And to prove that some people have all the luck, here is the area where people who live in this neighborhood can relax on their own little beach. I hesitated to ride down here (I was on my trike) because there were scary signs everywhere warning that the beach was only for subscribers. I feared one of the neighbors would come storming out of the house and tase me. But I later discovered that my sister is a subscriber, so I was legal (sort of).
Rocky Mountain National Park
Unlike the Grand Canyon, and also unlike Zion National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park is incredibly easy to photograph. Really, you could close your eyes and wave a $25 disposable camera randomly in the air and get good pictures. Everywhere you look there is some magnificent feature. So I put away my digital SLR and bought a $25 disposable camera, put on a blindfold…
Well, it looks like that, anyway. I just couldn’t stop snapping.
Trail Ridge Road runs through the park, across the Continental Divide, climbing to just over 12,000 feet. Although I have hiked at that altitude (lo, these many years ago), I have never been that high in a vehicle before. Needless to say, it was magnificent. Sub-alpine terrain is my very favorite, and the tundra above the tree line was stunning as well.
The main campground is at about 8100 feet, which is pretty much the lowest point in the park. After a night there, I drove to the Park and Ride and rode my trike up to Bear Lake, which is around 9500 feet. This is a new VT triking altitude record.
Climbing up the west side of the divide
View across the tundra near 12K feet
Tarns just east of the divide
Many places to break your leg or arm east of the divide
Campground. You can see the low-rent nature of our decorative paint job here.
Impossible light, beautiful creek on the way to Bear Lake
Biking to Bear Lake. The road looks so nice and flat here that you would never imagine how steep it really is.
On the way to Bear Lake, I stopped at Sprague Lake, a gentle walk and some gorgeous scenery
More Sprague Lake
This photo is duplicative and compositionally inferior, but it shows some of the golden aspens that are just everywhere this time of year.
Canada geese at Sprague Lake. Plus some fuzzy tourists in the background.
Aspens on the hillside
Bear Lake elevation 9475 ft.
Aspens in the sun, Bear Lake
Rocks and aspens, Bear Lake
The aspens are golden, but also can blush a delicate red, like these
It's almost as if we had never stopped...
We left off our journey in Colorado in July because the Vagabond Tourist got sick and had to flee for home. Or be rescued by someone else who fled for home.
But now, we are back on the road, and back in Colorado, in fact, with a resplendent new paint job making our flamingos lovelier than ever. The aborted trip to Rocky Mountain National Park is happening at last, just a couple of months later than planned. It is very early in October, and the aspens are all golden. It’s a perfect time to visit the park. On the way to the park, we paused outside Steamboat Springs to soak up another glorious Colorado view. Then we stayed west of the park in the National Forest for a night.
Mason Crosses the Divide
Here is Spring Creek Pass, one of the multiple times we drove across the Continental Divide. And here is my aging but fearless co-pilot strolling across the divide at another point (possibly Wolf Creek pass) as if she didn’t know how momentous the occasion was.
Heavenly Colorado
And I really DO mean that Colorado is heavenly. I have never seen any place that I love as much as southern Colorado in the springtime. Unless it might be northern Colorado. These pictures were taken somewhere in the National Forest south of Pagosa Springs when I was riding my trike around the forest service roads. And what are those giant dark blobs covering the ground? Could they be …. CLOUD SHADOWS??
Heavenly Flagstaff
I don’t really mean that Flagstaff is heavenly. Flagstaff is not even remotely heavenly. But the mountains around Flagstaff are chock-full of places that are just heavenly when the weather is fair and in the 70’s, just like this spot a bit to the south. I took advantage of some dispersed camping opportunities in the National Forest there, and rode my trike a few miles to this lake, which might be Lake Ashurst. Or Lake Ashburn. Or Ash-something. I called it Heavenly.
Cloud shadows. On the mountains. Version infinity plus one
After Zion NP, and still between halves of the Grand Canyon, we spent some time bumming around Hurricane and St. George, doing interesting things such as laundry, going to Costco, replacing bad tires, and so on. We were really still waiting for the north rim to open, or for the weather in the mountains to become bearable, as we had the idea of driving east to see a bunch of National Parks in Utah and Colorado, culminating with Rocky Mountain National Park. That never happened because the weather never got any better. We just kept driving around trying to get out of the rain.
While ‘exploring’ the southern UT area (really just looking for a dry spot), we spent a couple of nights in the National Forest outside St. George. My never-ending obsession with photographing cloud shadows attracted me to this view.
Also by way of Zion National Park
After stopping at Vermillion Cliffs on the way from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the north rim, we discovered that the road to the north rim was closed due to snow. Hmm. This was round about mid-May and we somehow figured the north rim would be similar to the south rim, which was lovely and temperate. We were in error. So, having nothing better to do while waiting for the road to open, we went to Zion National Park in southern Utah.
To get from one side of Zion NP to the other, you have to drive through a tunnel. RVs don’t fit well in the old tunnel, so you have to buy a special permit that enables you to hog the entire road for the length of the tunnel, blocking all the traffic going the other way until you are through. Then, having hogged the road and navigated the tunnel, you discover that there is no place to park an RV within the boundaries of the park. The handful of RV parking spaces are, of course, full by the time you get to the Visitor’s Center and there is no ancillary parking whatsoever. You must drive to town (I have blocked out the name of this town due to trauma) and pay $25 to park on the street there. Then you can ride a shuttle into the park and ride another shuttle around the park. Very little of the park is accessible by road/shuttle, and there are about a billion people trying to see the place, so what I mostly saw was other people. I didn’t really enjoy this whole process all that much. I would rather have ridden my trike around so I could see. But I didn’t know I had that option, so I spent the majority of my visit catching partial glimpses of this and that through the windows of a shuttle bus. When the bus stopped, I got out and walked as far as I could. Unfortunately, being handicapped, that isn’t terribly far.
In addition, the slot canyon known as The Narrows (which is what I most wanted to see) is accessible only by wading up a river which was, at this time of year, a raging torrent, and completely off-limits to the public. If the public was stupid enough to try to wade into it anyway, the public would be swept away. Even the public that climbed over the railings at the Grand Canyon was not silly enough to try to see The Narrows. Even I was not silly enough, and I wanted to see it very badly.
In my quest to See Absolutely Everything, I made a few stops along the road on the east side of the tunnel as I drove into the park. This was one of them.
More east side
The views at Zion National Park are all vertical. One spends a great deal of one’s time resting one’s head on the back of one’s neck while trying not to fall over.
This is the gentle stream through which one must wade to see The Narrows.
Here is Lower Emerald Pool. The stuff that looks like rain is actually waterfall. There are two of them falling from rocks that loom over the path so you end up walking behind them.
This is a picture of waterfall #1 taken from behind waterfall #2.
By way of the Vermillion Cliffs and Marble Canyon
In order to get from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the north rim, you have to drive something like 200 miles. If you are the Vagabond Tourist, that is too far to drive in one day, so we stopped at Vermillion Cliffs National Monument on the way. The Vermillion Cliffs are red. I know. Insane! Yet so it is.
The Colorado River also runs through this area, looking anything but mighty enough to carve out the Grand Canyon. Across the road from the imposing vermillion cliffs is a non-vermillion desert area with boring beige soil that looks flat but actually rolls a bit. We pulled off the road there and parked along a dirt road that appears to go nowhere, and in fact DOES go nowhere. I rode my trike down this road, and before I got to Nowhere I ran into the Colorado River running through the Marble Canyon. It surprised me because there is no sign whatsoever that there is a river, or water of any sort, in the area. You cannot see it from the road. I had to look on the map to ascertain that the meandering stream I found at the end of the dirt road was actually the Colorado River.
Here are some of the vermillion cliffs looking characteristically vermillion
Here is the Colorado flowing through Marble Canyon with some more vermillion cliffs in the background. It looks more like a drainage ditch than the Mighty Colorado. Let us contrast this view with the below, which is the only glimpse of the Colorado that I could get from the top of the Grand Canyon…and believe you me, it was hard to find. I shot it with a 200 mm telephoto lens because otherwise it would have been invisible.
Here is the Mighty Colorado flowing through the Grand Canyon.
You didn't really think we were done with the Grand Canyon, did you?
There is another half to the Grand Canyon: the North Rim. It doesn’t open until June 15th, so it took me a while to get there, but get there I eventually did. The weather was not the best. I found a wide spot in the road to park my RV (the lot at the Visitor’s Center was full) and rode my trike 11 miles up to the rim, where I took these photos. The place I rode is the highest point on the canyon rim, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8100 feet. I felt all virtuous about riding that high until recently, when I rode to 9475 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park, which post will follow shortly.
OK, this is not really the North Rim. It is a picture of cloud shadows at the South Rim that I left out of my preceding post.
THIS is the North Rim, and you can see what the weather was like. I didn’t reach the rim until late afternoon, and fortunately it was not raining in the place where I was standing.
More rain over the canyon
There was actually as much sun as there was rain that day at the North Rim, and it made getting pictures quite a feat, as portions of the photo were in the sun, and therefore over-exposed, and other parts in deep shadow, and therefore under-exposed. Still, the rain brought out the intense colors in the rocks and made for some amazing views.
This is probably one of my favorite pictures of all time…in fact, I like it so much that I posted two versions of it (see below). It is so abstract that It looks almost unreal. It demonstrates perfectly what I was saying about the light the day I was at the North Rim.
Here is version number 2. It’s less abstract, which is what I don’t like about it, but the sky is so much prettier that I can’t resist it. So you tell me….which one is better?
Grand Canyon National Park
The first time I went to the Grand Canyon, about three years ago, I took many pictures. None of them came out. Every single one was hideously over-exposed, and they all looked like bleached white rocks against an even whiter background. Well, this year I was determined to expose my photos properly. It turns out, though, that the Grand Canyon is actually kind of hard to photograph. The photos all look rather featureless. The canyon is so vast and deep that it is difficult to get any sense of scale in a photograph. One could be looking at a pit mine or some other dull expanse of dirt and rock. This isn’t a commentary on how magnificent the canyon is in person. It is just hard to capture the hugeness of it in a photo.
Naturally, this difficulty did not deter me from trying. I wasted many, many pictures trying to reproduce the breathtaking expanse of the canyon on film (figuratively speaking, film).
And now, I am sharing the fruits of my efforts, lots and lots of mediocre pictures of seemingly uninteresting rocks, with lucky you. If I could make viewing this post mandatory so that each and every visitor to this site had to sit through every single photo, I would. In fact, I would blaze the pictures across social media and forbid anyone to navigate past them until they had endured them all. That is how important I think the Grand Canyon should be to all Americans. So enjoy these pictures, and remember: suffering builds character.
Canyon within a canyon
It just goes on and on…so far it’s hard to see the other side clearly. And the top, the land out of which it is carved, is utterly flat. It is like a reverse mountain range.
Clouds marching over the canyon
Here are some very silly people (IMO) who are ignoring the signs telling people to stay safely behind railings in viewing areas. Instead, they have clambered out upon some of the rocks perched thousands of feet above the canyon floor to take pictures of themselves defying death. Hopefully, they will continue to defy it rather than falling victim to it. To a person such as myself, who cannot stand securely on her own feet in the middle of a parking lot at the bottom of Death Valley, it seems exceptionally foolhardy. My hands are actually sweating in fear as I write this. Most of the pictures I took of the Grand Canyon were taken from a sitting position because raising a camera to my eye is enough to make me lose my balance, and the railings at the Grand Canyon are actually quite low, or, in many cases, non-existent. In this case, though, the people are below one of the main viewing areas near Grand Canyon Village, and they have climbed over the railing to immortalize themselves.
Your Neighbor....
I know that I keep publishing pictures of cows that wander through my campsites. I can’t help it. How can you resist these faces? And look! These gals are wearing earrings!
Your neighbor, the cow.
Your neighbor, the elk. You can see the resemblance, right? No earrings here. Wild cows do not wear jewelry.
Another elk. Both of these were wandering around Grand Canyon National Park. This particular one was about four feet from a busy roadway.
Now this is the view of an elk that you are, in my experience, most likely to have. I saw many, many elk butts whilst riding my trike through Grand Canyon National Park.