Caribou Ranch Hike

          I got two days of work done in one day so I could go play today. A friend recently mentioned about hiking at Caribou Ranch. Oh yeah.....I had been there once last summer. It is not a dog friendly hike, so it was never on my radar before. But now that Molly dog is in spirit, it was time to revisit it. I got there about 7:30am and was the first one in the parking lot. Perfect! This place is much busier on the weekends which is why I like to go during the week if possible.
I was driving up the dirt road to get to the parking lot and heard some chattering.....a cute black squirrel! I didn't have to get out of the car to get this....

 Got into the parking lot, got my stuff and headed out on the trail. My hopes were to see a bob cat, a moose and some elk. It didn't happen but saw some other cool animals.
  There were lots of chickadees and nuthatches but then I saw this one bird. I didn't know who this was, so looked it up when I got home. Seems it's a veery. Also know as a willow thrush. Very cute!

I continued on the trail. I kept seeing glimpses of chipmunks and then got this cute pic.

Come on! Is that cute or what!

There were these cute guys all around. Here are some pics....

  I headed over to the stream to attempt some moving water pics. They all looked like crap but saw this cute squirrel having a snack.

These trails are very well maintained. And there were still some beautiful wild flowers. Here's what it all looks like....

   I had seen some red tailed hawks soaring high up in the sky. I was too far away to get a pic but the trail is a big loop. So as I made it around the loop, the hawks put on quite the show by soaring above me. It's quite challenging to get decent pics but I got a couple......

If you live in the Denver area, go check out this trail. It's well maintained and not very hilly. Of course you are at 8200 ft elevation. So that does make it a bit challenging. 

Thanks for reading!