Out West Adventure

We had a family wedding in Utah that turned into a whole out west adventure. It was a whirlwind. We stayed in 5 different locations, early am flights, and a lot of driving in between. A couple days later and we're all still trying to catch up. It didn't help that Monday was chaos with things with the girls, work, and a Monday night tournament. We are exhausted but it was well worth it!

One of our main goals was to show the girls all the different wildlife they've seen on TV or in books. We found a lot of it! Starting out in Rocky Mountain National Park. Moose, mule deer, elk, marmots, pikas, and I might be too tired to remember what else. The youth Vortex binoculars were really useful on this trip. Most youth binoculars are just hot garbage and no one can see anything with them. Once the girls got the hang of these they could actually see the animals up close.

On our drive from the park to the next stop we found our first pronghorns of the trip. The only thing we never found that we'd hoped to were bighorn sheep. We struck out in both national parks we visited. The parks are cool but dang are the people annoying. It was hard to watch the disrespect they had to a moose cow and calf at one spot. They definitely draw the crowd that goes outside once a year. But they are also full of different wildlife and geological features that you might not easily find anywhere else. We would also visit Arches National Park on this trip. There was about a 50 degree temp difference between the 2 parks.

Our wildest animal encounter occurred about 20 miles outside of Meeker Colorado. We had an amazing place to stay there overlooking the White River and a valley (that was full of mule deer in the evenings). The hillside we were staying on was part of one of Colorado's biggest wildfires in 2025 but the rest of the valley and the other side was lush and green. We had gotten back from fishing (more on that soon) and were hanging out on the deck. Millie the youngest calmly declared, there's a bear. Followed by the oldest also claiming there's a bear. As much as they love to play the made you look game, I knew this was for real. I turned around and sure enough there is a unique looking black bear approaching the deck from the burnt area. Had it been a little further over it could have walked right onto the deck without anyone knowing. It wasn't a very big bear and I think that helped everyone calmly go inside. There was no sign of the momma bear and I don't know enough about bears to say if this was a young bear on its own or one just ranging farther away from mom. I do know it came from directly downwind so I don't know if it came to investigate our snacks or what. I made my way back out to the deck to find out where the bear was sitting. Amanda found it by looking through the cracks in the deck and it got up on its hind legs to basically sniff our feet. It made it to the edge of the deck and stood up and looked at us all. We were well out of harms for way and still keeping an eye out for a bigger bear. So the girls got to get in on the encounter too. Eventually it wandered back to the hills but we were definitely on alert the rest of the night while checking out the stars. It was a crazy experience for some people from the lower peninsula in Michigan.

I hadn't really planned on doing any fishing on this trip. But we had some time around the White River and everything I read about it seemed like it was a great place to try. Rainbows, browns, cutthroats, and mountain whitefish. I couldn't resist the urge to pick up a new species. The biggest challenge was going to be getting gear with the timing of things. I try to avoid getting tackle at places like Walmart but when we stopped for groceries. They had everything I needed. I could have been much more effective if I'd gotten a spinning combo too but I thought that this would be my chance to try fly fishing. Some flies, cheap fly combo, hemostats, and a Colorado license and I was good to go.

Deciphering the river access and not having waders would be the biggest challenge. Lucky for us the river was really low which helped me out. Everyone I talked to was really concerned about fires though so I hope they get some rain soon. After a bit of driving around we stopped in an area another fisherman was just leaving. He was from Pennsylvania but had a cabin out here. He was changing areas because he was bored of catching whitefish and gave me some local knowledge and a couple nymphs that were working. I really appreciated that and was on the fast track to success.

It didn't take long at all to land the first one and start catching others. Between the willows and cold water it was a challenge to get the presentation right but it was working out. It would have been much easier and effective to present the same thing with a spinning rod. I don't think my cheap setup was helping much either. This place had steep banks and just wasn't very kid friendly so we decided to relocate to towards town. We found an awesome area for everyone there, had lunch, and did more fishing. I did really well with my nymph setup on whitefish here and also lost 2 really nice trout on dry flies. It was a major success and I was going to try again the next morning. Water shoes and swim trunks weren't ideal for a 38 degree morning though. I got up at 5:30 hoping to find a bug hatch and get some trout. None of that was happening but I caught whitefish until I couldn't stand the cold anymore. I had some muley bucks in the river with me which was pretty cool. Even though I never got a trout it was well worth it.

That afternoon we would end up in Moab Utah and 106 degree heat. That's a 68 degree temp swing in one day! Moab was great too and it was a lot of pool time to beat the desert heat. Our final destination was in the mountains in Utah. I thought the fishing was done but between some encouragement and local knowledge from a buddy who just moved there and some girls and a nephew who thought it would be cool. I bought the much more expensive Utah license and we had a short time to make it happen. It was very challenging and frustrating seeing these fish that just didn't want to bite. Slick calm, middle of the day, and bright sun didn't help things on this trout pond. Everyone got a small rainbow except Millie, we just ran out of time to get a dinner associated with the wedding.

The rest of the trip was more of your standard wedding stuff with a lot of mule deer around. It was a great place to stay and the drive up the mountain was definitely interesting. Amanda did an amazing job of finding great places to stay and things to do. Even if it meant a lot of time in between in the car. At least there is always a lot of territory to look at as you can see for miles. I guess if we go back I'll have to put cutthroats as a priority because even though I've caught a lot of fish. It's still fun to catch a new species no matter what it is!