ALWAYS Take the Road Less Traveled: Regal Eagles

This weekend, we drove down to Casper, Wyoming to meet up with some longtime friends. We left home just before lunch, thankful that the roads had cleared from last weekend's snowstorm. We were hardly out of Billings when I spotted an eagle in a ravine along I-90. Dan immediately slowed down and asked if I wanted to go back. After a moment's hesitation, I said yes. We backed up nearly half a mile on the shoulder, but I am so glad we did. The single eagle that I had seen turned out to be part of a whole family!

It was all the excitement that we had for the day, but that was okay. We had a great visit with our friends, then settled into our motel for the night.

We left fairly early Saturday morning. We didn't really have a concrete plan for the day, just to get home by day's end. It was windy, but sunny and not too cold. (Until we reached Shoshoni anyway. It was freezing there!) The only icy roads that we encountered were in Wind River Canyon. There are obviously some places that just never get direct sunlight! From Thermopolis, we turned toward Cody. We grabbed lunch at Wendy's and decided to go check out the South Fork. We have never driven up that way before. Generally, when we go that direction, we are going to Yellowstone, and the North Fork is the most direct route.

Boy, have we ever been missing out! We started seeing deer right away, then bald eagles. We even saw a coyote. From the main road, we debated momentarily before taking a gravel side road. I laughingly told Dan that that's where the big bucks had to be, since we were only seeing does and small bucks. Surprisingly enough, I was right! We watched three mulie bucks feeding in a large meadow. Unfortunately, they were quite a distance from us on clearly-marked private property. We had also lost our sunshine, so really good photos were not forthcoming. (I know, I know... Excuses, excuses!) The pictures that we did get confirmed that these were indeed the biggest bucks that we have yet seen! You can bet that we are already planning a return trip to the South Fork!