Perusing The Peak To Peak Highway

Last weekend I decided to continue my quest to see an actual, live moose in Colorado, and decided to drive up to Nederland, located about 17 miles west of Boulder.  To get there you drive into the mountains via Boulder Canyon, and from there can head north along the "Peak to Peak" Highway, where according to legend, moose have been spotted.  During my travels that day I spotted two yellow warning signs with the outline of a moose on them, which raised my hopes immensely. Nederland, by the way, used to be a hippie community back in the 1960s.  It is now most famous for it's "Frozen Dead Guy" festival, celebrating a local resident who had himself frozen after death in the hope of someday coming back, a la Woody Allen in Sleeper. And no - the hippies did not move away.  They are still there, just much older. In any case, I stopped at Mud Lake, where I did spot what looked like an old hippie bus (see top row of collage), but not any moose.  I drove all along the Peak to Peak Highway (middle row of collage) and spotted nothing.  As sunset neared, I drove back down Boulder Canyon, (bottom right hand photo), and hung out in Boulder itself for a little, where I took the photograph on the lower left of dusk over the Flatirons.  And after this experience, I am even more convinced that moose do not, and never have, existed in the State of Colorado.