Hit the road with binoculars and camera in hand in search of wildlife.
Imagine looking directly into a grizzly bear’s eyes or seeing a moose calf take its very first steps.
Picture watching an osprey dive to pluck a fish from the water or witnessing the majestic speed of a pronghorn as it bobs and weaves at mock speed through the sage. Moments like these offer us a reprieve from our crazy world. They touch our souls, awaken the conservationist within, and remind us how important it is to protect our public lands, open spaces, and the critical and irreplaceable habitats they support. Watching wildlife—whether it’s an elusive mountain lion, a majestic elk, or a whimsical mountain bluebird—offers us a chance to unplug from the stresses of daily life and reconnect with our natural surroundings, something we all need more of these days. If this sounds dreamy, pack your binoculars, camera, and sense of adventure and prepare to embark on one of our favorite wildlife-watching road trips.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Only a two-hour drive from Denver and closer to Boulder, this crown jewel holds a host of impressive features, including 60 peaks over 12,000 feet; the headwaters of the Colorado River; the Continental Divide; and healthy populations of elk, moose, black bear, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion. Estes Park, the eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park (nps.gov/romo), is known for the huge elk herds that hang out in town. Sheep Lakes, near the Fall River entrance, offers a more remote wildlife hot spot where sheep, elk, moose, and more may be found. One of the best ways to spot wildlife in the park is by taking a scenic drive along Trail Ridge Road, which offers breathtaking views and ample opportunities to catch glimpses of all of the park’s magnificent creatures against the stunning backdrop of the mountains. Near the top, hit the Tundra Communities Trail, a short, easy meander along a paved interpretive trail through the tundra where you can spy pikas, sheep, or elk. Looking for moose? Head to the west side of the park, near Grand Lake. Cruise through the wildlife-rich Kawuneeche Valley and watch for moose (and other critters) drawn to this side of Rocky because it is typically cooler, wetter, and more lushly vegetated than its eastern counterpart. Hit the Green Mountain-Onahu Loop to Big Meadows and/or the East Inlet/Adams Falls trails; both offer opportunities to spy moose, elk, bear, and deer.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado
While Great Sand Dunes National Park (nps.gov/grsa) is best known for its towering dunes, it also provides a unique habitat for wildlife. The park is home to diverse bird species, including mountain plovers and burrowing owls. You can also spot elk, mule deer, pronghorn, coyotes, bobcats, and even black bears in the dunes and throughout the grasslands and forests. Hiking trails like Mosca Pass travel through aspen and fir forests, which offer additional opportunities for wildlife encounters.
Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado
One of the rare places where you can still experience intact native prairie habitat, the Pawnee National Grassland (fs.usda.gov/arp) is a hidden gem for wildlife enthusiasts. Largely known as a bird-watching destination, this vast stronghold of the increasingly threatened grassland ecosystem offers a self-guided birding tour along a 21-mile dirt road loop where you can get accustomed to the area and discover prime habitat for over 300 bird species, including long-billed curlews, mountain plovers, horned larks, prairie falcons, golden eagles, and Colorado’s state bird, the lark bunting. Take the hike to Pawnee Buttes and keep your eyes to the sky for hawks, falcons, and swallows nesting in the surrounding cliffs (cliffs closed to the public from March through June for sensitive habitat). Pawnee is also home to a diverse array of critters, including the swift fox, American badger, coyote, black-tailed prairie dog, black-tailed jackrabbit, mule deer, and pronghorn.
Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE)
One of the largest intact temperate ecosystems left in the world, the GYE offers something nowhere else in the lower 48 can: a place where animals and plant life are mostly the same as before humans arrived on the scene. At 22 million acres, the GYE includes Yellowstone (2.2 million acres) and Grand Teton National Park (310,000 acres), plus a wide range of surrounding national forest and wildlife refuges, state land, Bureau of Land Management holdings, tribal lands, and even private land. Just a day’s drive from the Front Range and you can immerse yourself in a land where grizzlies, wolves, bison, black bears, moose, elk, and more roam wildly. You’ll want to carve out enough time to fully explore this area (including geothermal features, which YNP is known for, and the Tetons themselves), but we’re focusing on wildlife hot spots. Visit in spring for baby season, and you might see a bear cub or a newborn elk. If you want to see big racks (antlers, people, antlers), come in fall when the moose and elk don their full headdresses.
Just a few minutes from Jackson, the National Elk Refuge (fws.gov/refuge/national-elk) offers ideal wintering habitat for elk. What does this mean for you? Visit in winter, and you’ll likely see thousands of elk roaming the landscape. Other animals like coyotes, wolves, bighorn sheep, and moose are frequent visitors to the refuge in winter. Horse-drawn sleigh rides offer an option to explore the refuge in style. Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) boasts stunning mountain landscapes and abundant wildlife a bit further down the road. The Gros Ventre River corridor provides great moose habitat. A scenic fall drive (when berries are peaking) on Moose-Wilson Road gives you the best chances to see a black bear. Grizzlies tend to stay in the northern part of the park but can be seen anywhere, so keep an eye out. The park’s lakes and rivers provide habitat for beavers, river otters, and various bird species; in this vein don’t miss the Oxbow Bend.
To the north, Yellowstone National Park (nps.gov/yell) is world-renowned for its wildlife. It’s home to a huge bison population, as well as elk, grizzly and black bears, wolves, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats. Check out the Hayden Valley or, farther north, the Lamar Valley (often called the “Serengeti of North America”) for your best bet to watch all these amazing creatures. In Grand Teton and Yellowstone, we highly recommend taking a guided tour with an expert naturalist to maximize your chances of finding critters in these vast, undisturbed landscapes.
