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Good morning, Estes Park! I saw a little morning color from the cabin's deck to start the day.
We got to OFRR by 8:30 and started the uphill drive. There were very few cars on the road at this time and no sign of the road repair crew. Since we've taken this route many times, we didn't stop at Chasm Falls, but we pulled over to take a few scenery shots before getting to the AVC.
Another shot a little farther up the road.
Once we got to the AVC, we continued on to the west side stopping at several spots like the Beaver Ponds and Coyote Valley. Although we have spotted moose at Beaver Ponds in the past, there weren't any around this morning. Looking for an area to have our picnic lunch, we went past Grand Lake and on to the Shadow Mountain Lake picnic area. When we got to the parking lot, we noticed 2 osprey sitting on a nest on a raised platform. An adult osprey happened to swoop by just as we were getting out of the car. So we did a little bird watching before we had our lunch.
Here are the two young ones sitting in the nest.
A little later, one of them was eating something. I try not to look too closely at this picture because I really don't want to know what the osprey is eating, but I do know that most of their diet is made up of fish.
This is the view we had of Shadow Mountain Lake while we were eating our lunch.
Of course, no west side trip would be complete without a stop to a forum favorite place--Grand Lake Chocolates.
As we headed back east, we happened to see some people with cameras at Beaver Ponds. Sure enough, there was a moose in the distance. To me, any moose sighting is exciting and we stopped to watch her until she wandered out of sight.
After that, it was an easy drive back through the park until we got behind a line of cars with the lead car going not much more than 15 mph.
B-Jay
