I heard them bugling with the light of dawn… an eerie hollow strained sound ending with a tinny whistle.
I snuck out of bed to watch them from the front window and then the porch—a whole herd of elk just outside my door, feeding on bushes and tips of spruce as they wandered along in the quiet of early morning… 
The mothers keeping watch over their gangly half-grown offspring eyed me suspiciously standing there in my pajamas…The buck noted my existence but seemed unimpressed… 
and then a second larger grander buck came striding intently across my line of vision oblivious to my presence. All the others cleared out of his way, the younger buck taking the lead, and moved along out of view around the end of our string of houses… Rutting season has begun.
The following morning I came out to breakfast less impressed. Not only are elk wild, majestic and awesome to watch… They also eat petunias, ravage lobelia, and generally have no sense of the aesthetic value of a profusion of potted flowers on an otherwise sterile porch… They left me a straggle of pansies
and a few token petunias, and the dirt. The time for flowers is past. Autumn is upon us, and with it, the elk.
So I took my camera and went scavenging for any remaining beauties in the meadow…
The bees are scavenging too.
We squeezed in another hike on a day of mixed sun and cloud…This time, Tunnel Mountain, which sits smack dab in the middle of Banff. It reminded us of hiking up Scout…
Here it is from the highway:
And here’s the view from both sides at the top…
The Bow River, winds its turquoise thread through the valley
The one remaining highlight of the week was getting to spectate ( : as The Tour of Alberta got underway on Day 2 from the heart of Kananaskis country just down the highway from us.
Pretty neat!
–LS
O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Ps.104:24 ESV
