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Steamboat Springs — I didn't see my first elk Friday morning as I drove from Craig to cover a track meet in Rifle.

There was a huge Cabela's in Kansas City that was - I kid you not - Kansas' leading tourist attraction a few years ago. Giant stuffed elk stood proudly near the front door, somehow serving as a magnet for the state's citizens and simultaneously mind-tricking people into buying more Carhartt gear than they could use in a thousand hunting expeditions.

Finding wildlife has been one of my top priorities since arriving in Colorado, and I had been pretty disappointed until Friday. On several occasions, I thought I spied a moose while driving to Stagecoach State Park late at night. Each of my four sightings turned out to be the same hay bale, however.

I did see a fox, once. I almost swerved off the road, not to avoid it, but to catch it in my headlights and prove its existence.

Meanwhile, friends bombarded me with tales of bears ambling down Lincoln and somersaulting off restaurants. They told me of chasing them with frying pans and staring them down in the middle of AprÃs Ski Way. I wrote nearly 800 words in a story about the area's elk populations and was given detailed information about how the two largest conglomerations of elk in the world were gathered on either side of Steamboat. Yet, I had never seen one.

I've looked out my window every morning expecting to see 10,000 sets of hooves marching down the road, and I've been kicking around tying some old hamburger to my landlord's dog to see if I can find a bear. (Just kidding. Beau is great.)

I finally saw elk Friday, however. Elk carcasses littered Colorado State Highway 13 as if it were the morning after Elk Gettysburg. There were freshly fallen animals, and there were decomposed ones, little more than piles of bones with a few tufts of fur attached. I was in awe, driving slow and looking them over. The people behind, not so infatuated, sped around me without waiting for the appropriate yellow dashes.

After the track meet, I decided on a different route home. I'd love to take an elk during my time in Colorado. My Ford Escape just isn't my weapon of choice.

Things really got interesting on the way home. The elk, live ones this time, lined the highways. They were plenty easy to see, casually crossing in front of me thanks to their bright, reflective eyes. Gathered together on the side of the road, watching me pass, they looked extraordinary freaky. I stopped, flashed my brights and honked my horn, and it was hard to tell if they even noticed.

Instead, they just gazed at me with those wide eyes, their heads following my progress like a bunch of hypnotized vampires from a Will Smith movie.

I made it home without claiming my first trophy by driving slow and adding an hour to my late-night trip. I now believe the stories of the elk herds, and I believe the danger of driving south from Steamboat late at night.

I still don't know about those bears, though, so if anyone out there has an especially tough or fast dog, I've got a great idea.