September 5, 2023 – After dinner Barry and I set out on our mission to see a bull elk. We went to the Lake Village Hotel area. As we went down the road we saw these two. We stopped.
The fawn’s spots were fading. Soon we realized there were two fawns!
While these deer were cute, we’re looking for elk–hopefully, bull elk, so we moved on. We arrived at the Lake Village Hotel area. Beautiful area with a cool looking hotel. We explored briefly to take some quick pictures.
We decided to go to Bridge Bay right down the road. BINGO! Pulling into the marina parking lot, we immediately saw people with cameras. OMG. JACKPOT!!! There were two bull elk off to the right corner of the field! We parked quickly and jumped out.
And it got even better! The adjacent campground had just closed for the season. The elk seemed headed towards it. Barry and I carefully and quietly walked up a nearby paved trail towards the campground. We didn’t go very far when we saw the elk in the trees to the right of the path!
We watched both bulls from a safe distance. We were careful to give them space and not accidentally spook either one of them. We remained cognizant to each one’s location as one went further up the left away from us and out of sight while the other one came closer, and crossed diagonally to the right in front of us.
At one point I thought to look around to see if the second bull might be reappearing. I certainly didn’t want to be startled by him or vice versa. He did, in fact, circle back around and was in front of us but to the left.
This had been quite a thrill, but we figured it was time to go. We got back to the Jeep to head home when we saw that one bull was now near the entrance road to the campground. So we turned up the entrance to stop on the road to watch this guy a little more.
He grazed more, then strutted right across the road in front of us to continue grazing on the other side of the road. What a beautiful animal!
Heading back to Fishing Bridge Campground we had a spectacular sunset. The perfect end to an awesome day. I’m still smiling from our quiet experience with those two bull elks!!
And it was even more magnificent as we crossed Fishing Bridge!
