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Published: July 23rd 2009
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Day 50. Monday.
It's been a sight filled day.
I was in no rush to get up since I was'nt going anywhere except for a ride today. Several years ago my then boss introduced me to the idea of putting bacon on a chicken sandwich. Bacon being my favorite swine product, with pork rines a close second, does'nt have a bad use as far as I'm concerned and it goes nice with chicken. Why am I telling you this? Once I did get up I warmed up the remaining cajon chicken sandwich meat and some bacon of breakfast. By then it was about 11:00 and time to go for a ride. East from here seemed like the obvious way to go since I came in from the West and am going to leave to the South. There is a town 75Km away so that seemed like a reasonable destination. Besides some great mountain and lake views I saw a solitary brown fox and three herd, flock, school, cluch, swarm, pack, gaggle, or whatever you call a group of mountain goats. OK, one sighting was just a pair.
I got back to camp around 16.00 and got out the lounge chair so
I could study the backs of my eyelids for awhile. A noise to my left caused me to open them again and passing by on the other side of the picnic table was an Elk. She just wandered through the campground checking the ground for something to eat. Unfortunately by the time I got something to take a picture with all I got was a butt behind a tree.
After cooking and consuming the steaks I started marinating last evening I got back on the bike to go into Jasper for an icecream. Half a kilometre up the road were two more Elk grassing along the roadside so I stopped for some pictures. One of the elk kept coming in my direction so I just stayed still and kept shooting.
I was surprised to see a Rocky Mountaineer again. Actually two of them at the Jasper station. I saw one on my ride out of 70 Mile House the other day too. That makes four so far.
Once my icecream was history I headed to the East end of town to a photo location I spotted last evening and was somewhat surprised to see 12 more Elk. Some grassing and
some laying down. While stopped watching a couple from Holland pulled up behind me for some pictures and we talked a few minutes about what they had seen so far. After 20 minutes or so I turned back toward town and there were another three lying near the road. That's 18 in one day. I don't ever remember seeing them before but perhaps as a child.
The Natural Resources guy had just arrived to chase them out of town. He said they can get aggressive with more than one male around. At least I think that's what he said. I was idoling along the shoulder as he was waving a hockey stick with streamers taped to it.
I was on my way again when I saw several cars pulled to the side of the road. More Elk? Nope. A large black bear. At least 50% bigger than the ones I have seen up till now. It was in some woods and I had to watch for a minute to see if it was a grizzly or not because it was so much bigger.
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