Wednesday, October 7

One reason for this trip was to enjoy fall colors.

We had a short delay here – but the roadside view was beautiful.

We arrived at Benezette about 2:15 pm and enjoyed an early supper before going on an expedition to find elk.

Our first elk sighting was not far from the restaurant. That is one beautiful bull elk.

We knew something was going on when we came around a bend in the mountain road and saw lots of parked cars and people walking around with cameras.

He was in someone’s yard, and the lady of the house was sitting on the porch watching him and all the people.

We eventually moved on to a few elk-viewing areas – but saw nothing, so headed back toward the Visitor Center.

The large bull was still in the yard, but was now up and walking around.

We went to the Visitor Center to see if there were elk in the meadow. They usually come out of the woods about dusk.

But first, I stopped to take some closeups of the pretty leaves.

I found an empty bench and visited with a couple from Syracuse, NY, until Cerwin arrived. He took a nap in the car. It was cold and windy and there were no elk – only a few wild turkeys – so many viewers left. We waited about an hour before leaving.

The couple from Syracuse told us elk were walking around the Visitor Center yard the night before – making the rangers nervous as they tried to keep people and elk at a safe distance.

We headed back to the viewing centers and passed the large elk who now had a female hanging around him.

By this time he was bugling – a sound I love to hear in the wild. There are a variety of bugle sounds, but the one we heard is known as the scream bugle – a bull-to-bull call that establishes dominance and puts a subordinate bull in its place.

He was letting other bulls in the area know that this was his lady.

On the way to a viewing area we saw two whitetail deer in a meadow. By dusk you don’t go to a viewing area only once, because things can change quickly as the elk come out to graze.

On the way back to the Visitor Center there was a herd of eight females and one bull – just across the road from the large bull and female we saw earlier.

By this point it was almost impossible to get through the road in this area as there were probably 30 or 40 cars and pickup trucks parked in every possible area. I wish I had thought about taking a picture of the vehicles.

A pretty female

Another beautiful, large male – enjoying grass in the evening sunshine. It would have been fun to watch the two males get into a fight over the ten females because they both looked like dominate males. Fights happen fairly often during the rut.

He looked to be as large – or larger than the first bull.

After we could get by the vehicles that were blocking the road, we went to a meadow behind the Benezette Restaurant and saw two females and two young ones – probably spring babies.

As we were trying to decide if they were twins or if each female had a single baby, something frightened them and both ran toward the same female – making us think that they were twins.

By dark we had seen seventeen elk – not bad – especially that we saw so many up close. There were two that were so far away that I didn’t try getting a picture.

From Benezette, we drove to St. Mary’s – a 20-25 minute drive – where we had reserved a motel. Twenty-five minutes is much better than a 3 1/2 hour drive home at night.

More about our road trip in my next post.