The Cache la Poudre River rises in the northern portion of Rocky Mountain National Park, descends eastward through a beautiful canyon and rumbles onto the Colorado Piedmont just northwest of Fort Collins. From that city, a paved hike-bike path follows the river as it flows on to Greeley, beyond which it enters the South Platte.
On this sunny, warm but breezy day, my wife and I explored a few nature preserves along the Cache la Poudre Trail, almost all of which were characterized by floodplain grasslands, riparian woodlands and a number of ponds and lakes; the latter, still mostly frozen, are almost all reclaimed gravel pits.
Earthen trails lead away from the paved hike-bike trail, providing up-close encounters with the various habitats. As one might imagine, we saw a good variety of waterfowl (including hundreds of Canada geese), flocks of ring-billed gulls, a pair of bald eagles and a northern harrier, in addition to the expected woodpeckers and songbirds.
