I made it back to Grant Ranch for another hike last weekend. I almost had the park to myself as I encountered only one other hiker and one biker the whole time. I began this day’s hike from the main parking lot near the ranch house [GP:grant].
I opened the gate and headed down the path towards the Hotel trail. I took a few moments to look at the ranch house and took the following picture. The ranch house is quite picturesque.
Before heading out to the Hotel Trail proper I walked around a small loop near the ranch house. There I encountered a couple of very tame deer. I believe this was a doe and her fawn, although at this point the fawn was almost as large as the doe. They were incredibly tame and I was able to get very close to them to take these pictures.
After watching the deer for about 10 minutes I headed out to the Hotel Trail proper and turned right. As I mentioned before the park was uncrowded. This next picture includes the only other hiker I encountered that day (look closely in the center of the picture on the trail). This picture was taken near the “corral”. Note the gate that crosses the trail. When hiking in Grant Park it is important to always close the gates behind you, otherwise it enables the many cows to escape.
On this day I brought one of my tripods along and took this picture of myself at the top of the hill looking back towards the parking lot.
I mentioned the cows…there were lots of them. I took a side trail towards bass lake and basically had to walk through the middle of a herd. Many of the cows had young calves. Now I know that cows are generally docile creatures, but I was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of them, and many of them were concerned about their cows. My presence caused a large symphony of “moos” to start that it begin to subside until I retreated.
There were also several hawks flying overhead. I managed to catch a picture of this one just as he passed directly overhead.
Remember what I said about closing the gates? Apparently someone left one of the gates open and this little guy managed to get on the wrong side of the fence. She was wandering down the trail as I was walking back to the parking lot. I tried to not spook her, but she clearly was trying to get away from me.
What was really interesting was that on the other side of the fence a cow that I presume was her momma kept following the calf and seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on me. If the calf had been near the gate I would have tried to shoo her in, but didn’t get the opportunity. Hopefully, some other visitor, ranger or rancher can reunite the calf and her momma.
This weekend the rain washed out any hiking adventures, but I should be back with another in two weeks.