The Adventures of Love and Happiness: Mama Moose, Baby Moose and Bighorn Sheep

Wildlife is everywhere we look.

When we moved here I was hoping that we'd have a neighborhood moose that just lounged in peoples yards. That didn't happen. I was a little bummed, to be honest.

But, I moved on and we've enjoyed seeing lots of wildlife on nearly every drive we take. Mostly we see deer. Lots of deer. They travel in packs or herds or gaggles, just kidding not gaggles, and don't particularly care about cars. One day we rode for 5 minutes behind several deer who preferred to walk down the middle of the road instead of beside it. They say we'll get tired of deer always being in our way but as of now, we still think it's pretty cool.

One time, on our way to a friends house for dinner, we pulled up on a group of pronghorn antelope. Not in a field, not on the side of a road. Right there in our friend's front yard eating his grass. He told us that they in fact do have neighborhood antelope that hang around like an outdoor group of pets. Jealous. Maybe we should look into buying a house in that neighborhood.

On our way to West Yellowstone we looked into a field and saw lots of elk. And when I say "lots", I mean thousands. You probably think I'm exaggerating but I'm not. They lined both sides of the road for miles in huge groupings. There were so many that we just pulled over on the side of the road and watched them for a while. Supposedly, they come down from the mountains to eat in the fields. It was amazing.

Big horn sheep are a big deal here. People hunt them and they are supposedly commonly found in the mountains nearby. We'd never seen one until we were coming back from Yellowstone. Sure enough, these sheep were just hanging out on the side of a mountain, or in the road. We, of course, stopped to take pictures. I'm sure we annoy the cars behind us, but I don't care.

We also saw a wolverine. Did you know that wolverines and wolves are 2 very different animals. I didn't. I thought wolf was short for wolverine. That's wrong. Don't judge me. Anyways, we saw this wolverine, not knowing exactly what is was and were pretty excited. I mean, when you see an animal and have no idea what it is...you get real excited. Anyways...

Mostly, I've wanted to see a moose since we've been here. I was SURE we'd see one on our snowmobiling trip so when we didn't, I was bummed. So, on our entire drive home I scanned the river banks and mountain sides for a moose. Finally, I see this big brown thing. Could it be? We couldn't stop right where we saw it, so we parked down the road and walked back. When we got there, it was gone. Are you serious!? Thankfully, Paul spotted the moose in the woods. Turns out it was a baby moose! My excitement quickly turned to fear when I realized we were standing 30 feet from a baby moose and we didn't see it's mama. Then, this huge moose slowly appeared and stepped out of the woods towards us. She was big and beautiful and not upset at all with us. It was such an amazing moment. Bucket list item "see moose in the wild" can now be crossed off.