The Elk of Elk County

How goofy am I that I have lived not far from Elk County my whole life and never realized that the reason it is called ELK County is... well, for the ELK! LOL! Anyway... a coworker was telling me about it the other day... how there are SO many Elk this time of year. Cory and I set out yesterday in the late afternoon to take a nice drive up to the "Elk Sighting Areas". I admit that I was getting a little discouraged. There seemed like so much traffic and I wasn't sure what exactly you did if you saw an Elk. Did they walk out on the road? (I was hoping not since I just got my car back from the deer incident). Did you have to spot them and pull over? Did you go to a designated area, like a park? I had no idea. I guess I just assumed we would see dozens of them on the sides of the roads. No such luck. HAHA. However, we did finally come to a congested area of cars. It was INSANE! There were people walking on the roads and pulling off. Cory saw them first... THE ELK were in someone's YARD! We turned around and found a place to pull off (my apologies to the property owner)... and walked up the hill. People kept gathering and I don't even know how many elk there were... maybe 20?? It was nuts. They just meandered through the yard, eating the grass. We think that the people probably fed them often... they were so tame. (Or so it seemed). People didn't bother them at all. It was like an attraction at the zoo! See how close they were to the peoples' house and car?? There were cows and babies (cute!) and then this big guy who startled us by walking toward us, then turning off to another part of the yard. He was BIG. ...Ok... So I admit... I thought they would be GIGANTIC... like, we're talking MOOSE big. I was a little disappointed that they weren't that big. But they were still pretty big and cool to watch. I started getting a little paranoid though, bugs were dive-bombing me... and SO many people kept coming and coming. The owners seemed to be getting irritated that people were on their property... but HEY... it happens. We took some pics and then walked back to the car and waited and waited to merge into traffic. I couldn't believe the cars and people. We passed another "sighting" on our way back... but didn't stop. The Elk was pretty far back from the road and near a curve... so we just kept on going. It was a neat experience though!! :) Hope you enjoyed the pictures!
One last little note... (Here is a pic of Cory and Boo) My lovely dog here... decided that she would roll in some.... shall I say... POOH! I was just about to leave for a meeting and she ran over to my mom's yard. My sister's kids were there and playing... and Boo wandered around and WHAP! Down she went into the pile of smelly pooh and I could've choked the snot out of her. We got her all nice and clean before I left... but boy was I not happy! She will be staying with Cory's parents this weekend while we take a trip to Massachusetts. I hope she doesn't do anything crazy for them! haha!