When we visited Rifle Mountain Park near Rifle, Colorado there were many things that stood out. It quickly became obvious that it is a place known for rock climbing and bouldering. There is also a nice peaceful campground with a small creek running nearby and with trails in the park, hikers and bikers can explore the area to see the views, flowers, and wildlife. One other point that stood out about Rifle Mountain Park was the abundance of chipmunks! They may have been somewhat of a nuisance at times but they were photogenic and put a smile on our face. Without further ado, here is our gallery of cute chipmunk photos from Rifle Mountain Park.
Cute Chipmunks become Scavengers
I am pretty sure the amount of chipmunks in the campground at Rifle Mountain Park was unnatural. There were just loads of these animals. They were also very comfortable coming into campsites to scavenge for scraps. This tells me they are used to visitors either feeding them or at least leaving scraps around a dirty campsite. I did not see anyone at the campground that was acting irresponsibly, but I assume that over time these animals have congregated here and learned how to find scraps when people leave them out.
Even though all these chipmunks should probably not be living in this one campground, they were really cute and since they were so brave around people, they were easy to photograph.
Cute Chipmunk Photos and my Realization about the Cycle of Life
I took probably way too many photos of these cute chipmunks. Some of them were really overweight and another sign that they were unnaturally living in this campground. As I took my photos, I began to reflect on the days adventures and realized that all these chipmunks in the campground are probably the reason why I saw snakes out by the road outside the campground.
The snakes showing up because the abundance of food is the only part of the chipmunk situation that seemed natural. Of course predators would show up, which goes to show the importance of keeping a clean camp and not feeding wildlife. But once again, they were cute and so I took photos.
Sneaky Chipmunks in the Campsite
These chipmunks would try to find any way possible to sneak past me while I was cooking dinner. I saw one try to take a tree branch over the top of me and I saw several others trying to sneak around rocks or grass. With Kitty, our cat, just inside the van, you can imagine how excited she was about the plethora of chipmunks. On one occasion, she did make it out the door to chase one of the little guys, but luckily she didn’t make any contact and we were able to range her back into the van without any casualties.
Final Cute Chipmunk Photos from Rifle Mountain Park
I have only shared a few of my favorite cute chipmunk photos in this blog. I probably took over a hundred because they just kept coming back. Even as I tried to get them to retreat from our camp site, they just kept returning. Even once they had to have known they were not going to find any food scraps in our site, they kept coming back. So I just continued to take photographs.
This was sort of a bittersweet experience because while the little creatures were cute and fun to photograph, it is an obvious case where human interaction with the wildlife has changed their behavior. So please, always be responsible and follow posted regulations so that we can all continue to enjoy camping at places like Rifle Mountain Park near Rifle, Colorado.
