Bears, Wolves, and Sunshine, oh my! Day 4
We decided Wednesday, after hearing the wolves howling before bed, that we needed to find time to visit Bear Country USA, as they were right next door to our camp ground and the rates seemed fairly reasonable. Bear Country is a lot like a zoo where the animals have an area they get to roam in, usually separated by tall fences and electrified cattle guards. All of the animals in this park are essentially found in the local wildlife, so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to envision yourself coming across these animals in a normal environment.
We paid $16 each to enter the park. Here you stay in your car and drive around a loop to the different animal exhibits. Some of the exhibits were better than other, for varying reasons. We saw a small herd of elk right off the bat, who were shedding their winter hide and growing some outstanding new antlers for the year. Like all of the animals, they take dozens of cars passing in stride, and barely lifted an eye to watch us go by. There were many other herbivores in the park, including Mountain Goats, Dall Sheep, Antelope, and Bison. Many of the animals also so newborns with them, adding to the authentic feel of the park.
There were also other animals like Mountain Lions, Bobcats, a Linx, and bears. Now there were normally only a few of each species, such as a pair of sleeping bobcats, or a single linx scratching itself in the shadow of the wall around its enclosure. There was even a single coyote laying in the sun looking more dead than alive, surely out of simple boredom, as pack animals never seem to thrive when left all alone. But there were no shortage of bears!
We could see the bears from almost every corner of the park. They were in a multitude of colors from black to cinnamon, dark brown to tan. As you can see here, most of the bears were laying about soaking up the sun and not giving any shits to the cars around them. Most were fairly close in size, happy in their fatness, going about their daily routine of filling up on raw rib meat and pancakes. A couple were even going for some morning nookie as car loads of tourists stopped to photo every single moment of the action. Every gates exit to the bear area had at least one bear checking out the cars coming in, looking for a way out of their crowded little corner of the world. It’s not that the bear zone was small, it was easily 10 acres (in my mind) for them to wander around in. It was the sheer number of bears at the park that probably made for some of them to wish for more distant pastures. There was easily a hundred bears in this park!
We also came across arctic wolves and timber wolves in the park. We got to watch the wiley timber wolf outsmart a bear for his food, and we knew he only did it out of spite for the bear, as there was no shortage of food that had been recently laid out for all of the animals. You can take the wolf out of the forest, but if your Little Red Riding Hood, you had better keep your ass in the car, cause it is still a wolf! Below are a few more shots of the animals we observed on this particular outing. We also walked the downtown area, surely to be covered in a later story. This one is about the animals, so I hope you enjoy them!
