A Wild Weekend with Winter Weather Driving, Wildlife Watching, and Wishing for Wolves!
February 19, 2024
Say that 5 times fast! This past weekend was full of fun and lots of W’s.
We kicked off President’s Day weekend with a fun and educational Winter Ice Driving event with The Import Mechanics. Hosted at Georgetown Lake in Georgetown, CO, this event was a chance to get your car out on the ice to have fun and learn about the dynamics of driving in slick conditions. There were 2 courses set up where you had to follow the cones to challenge yourself with maneuvering in the ice and snow. It was a blast! We took Don’s latest project car, an Audi S6 with a V10 engine in it. This car is a beast, producing over 400 horsepower and nearly 400 ft lbs of torque, it can go 0 to 60 in about 5 seconds. The car has been a work in progress for about a year, and this event was the furthest we had driven the car in one trip! We had to get off the highway a couple times on the way up due to a transmission slip (it couldn’t shift into the correct gear), so the drive up to the event was a bit stressful! We also had to contend with Saturday morning ski traffic on I-70, and the 54 mile trip took us nearly 2 1/2 hours!
Don in his Audi S6 V10 at The Import Mechanics Ice Driving Event, Georgetown Lake, CO, February 17, 2024
The event was well organized and executed, and so fun! Here are a few highlight photos:
After getting a chance to drive on the ice for a few hours, we started to make our way up to Kremmling. We had a hotel reservation (a free night at the Super 8, thanks to Wyndham Rewards) for the night and were looking forward to putting up trail cameras and searching for wolves! We even rented snowshoes locally from Broomfield Rentals Inc. On the way up the mountain the Audi started having problems again, and now we had a new noise! So we decided to turn around before Eisenhower Tunnel and head back home to switch cars. A slight damper! We got home and switched over to my Armada and got back on the road. Fortunately, traffic was much better now.
We headed up Highway 9 toward Kremmling and looked for places to hang our trail cameras. We were pleasantly surprised to see dozens and dozens of mule deer in the area, along with some elk! We decided we would come back the next day to snowshoe in to hang up cameras where the animals have been active. Since it was starting to get dark, we headed into town to check into the hotel. On the way into town we got a fun surprise seeing a fox hunting and then a small herd of elk hanging out with some horses!
We decided to go to The Dean West for dinner and beers after our exciting day. It’s a great local spot with quite a few local Colorado beers on tap and a fairly varied menu that should please almost any appetite…and it’s only a 5 minute walk from the Super 8! We enjoyed a burger and the fish’n’chips. There is also a great Mexican restaurant in town, Los Amigos, just across the street from the Super 8 if you’re looking for something different (and probably less busy).
The next morning we got breakfast at Big Shooter Coffee before we got on our way to snowshoe and hang trail cameras. If you ever drive through Kremmling between 7 am and 4 pm, you should stop here! They have wonderful and unique coffee drinks, homemade sweet and savory pastries, ice cream, and friendly staff. We have stopped here several times now and its’s great every time!
The energy was high as we got started trekking out to hang cameras. We clipped on our Crescent Moon snowshoes and started climbing! We saw lots of deer and elk tracks, then some mystery tracks. We followed the tracks hoping to find what made them, but after a couple hours of looking, we didn’t see anything. We did kick up some deer and found several great places to hang the cameras. We should definitely have footage of deer and elk, and hopefully the mystery critter on the cameras. We are also hoping to get footage of a bobcat, mountain lion, or a WOLF! Although wolves are a controversy, you can’t deny the excitement of looking for and possibly seeing them!
What do you think made these tracks?
The “mystery” tracks we found - they were all around the area and went pretty far…I think they are from a Pine Marten! What do you think?
Among the deer, elk, and what appear to be Pine Marten tracks, I also found weasel tracks! I can’t wait to see what we get on the trail cameras and share it with you!
The rest of the day, we spent time driving around the area to see if we could find any other wildlife or signs of wolves. We took a few new roads that we look forward to exploring again in the summer! We lucked out and found some unexpected wildlife along the way…including a group of bighorn sheep rams, wild turkeys, and dozens of golden and bald eagles! We ended the day spotting two moose and enjoyed missing all the ski traffic on the way home :-) Stay tuned for more about this adventure when we go back to check the cameras! What do you think we’ll get?
