So, this Labor Day, we decided to go looking for some Rocky Mountain Elk. The alarm went off at 4:30 in our patched up backpacking tent and I think my words to Jeremy when he told me that my watch was going off were ‘What ….. what?’ To which he replied, ‘Remember that whole thing about getting up early to see some elk? Well, it’s early.’
That’s right, ELK, here in Arkansas. We camped overnight at Lost Valley (after tooling around the Upper Buffalo yesterday afternoon) and awoke early with high hopes of seeing some of the local elk. These elk are descendants of elk brought in in the 1980’s from Colorado and Nebraska as part of an effort to bring elk back to the area. So far, the elk have done very well and the area is becoming known for the elk, with some 15,000 coming every year to see the beautiful animals. Of course, I wanted to see some myself.
The first attempt was Boxley Valley just across from the Lost Valley area. To avoid the entire embarrasing story, we thought we were about to see some elk as the sun started to rise and (thanks to the heavy, heavy fog) it ended up being just cows. Disappointed but not ready to give up yet, we drove down to Steel Creek to see if any were grazing those pastures. Not a one, though we did see two very skiddish whitetail down there. Our last attempt was just to drive north through the Boxley Valley region keeping a close eye on the pastures. We were finally rewarded and managed to pull over next to some farmland and get to watch a small herd of the elk graze and jump quite effortlessly from pasture to pasture. While they were concerned about our presence and slowly moved away out of sight, we were able to see them for a bit and take some photos to ‘preserve the moment in pictures’. We then continued up the valley and took some pictures of Boxley Baptist Church and then got to see another small herd of elk just across from the BRT Trailhead at Boxley.
While we were out, we managed some other shots as well, inlcluding some fun night shots taken while driving down the road. I think I’m going to have to title those ‘Impaired Driving’. We enjoyed the elk enough that we just may have to schedule to come back during the rut in October and again in the winter, which is supposed to be the best time to see them. You can see some of our best photos from the weekend in the album link above.