Tuesday- Brought to You by the Letter “U”

For Ungulates!  Kirsten’s morning report was that she has encountered all manner of ungulates in her travels since leaving ABQ.  Or as we like to call them in the NPS – charismatic mega fauna. A herd of elk held her up at the entrance to a park yesterday afternoon.  And this morning, she saw something light-colored flashing off the road to her side before it disappeared around a hill.  She slowed down and sure enough, an antelope popped out from behind the hill, stopped in the middle of the road, and stared at her.  The antelope eventually moved on, but she had to finally honk at some deer that tried the same stare-down in the middle of another lane.  In fact, while she was talking to me, there was a brief – “oh look – there’s another antelope!”  At the next park, there was a huge dark rock…that wasn’t.  You know where I’m going – she said it was the biggest bison she had ever seen.  (And we got some seriously up-close shots last summer visiting our friends at Tallgrass Prairie NM on our way to the IBA Meet.)  The daylight driving is allowing her to SEE these ungulates (and they her).  But always cleverly thinking ahead – she’s actually more worried about bison chips in the road– they can be very slippery.  

Bison at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, KS (TAPR) 

At last check this evening, all is well and she was heading to a park that it would just be a darn shame to miss on this IBR.  Looks like she’s going to have some company there tonight.  She said that with all the parks she’s been in, not one person has seen the “America the Beautiful” motorcycle sticker-pass on her windshield.  Funny, because that was of the reasons that she bought her pass from the National Forest Service office in ABQ- about 3 miles from the hotel.  (Teaching moment - the US Forest Service is a Bureau in the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Park Service is a Bureau in the Department of the Interior - very different missions.  Park rangers and forest "rangers" are not the same.  And they've got Smokey.)  In addition to the sticker pass, the USFS office also took credit cards.  If you read yesterday’s report, you’ll note that many other riders nearly cleaned out PETR of passes.  Uh...was I not supposed to type out load that the NPS person didn’t buy her pass from the NPS site?  Ah well, it’s all in the federal family.