North West Trek - bison, bears and beavers...

From Splendid Eliza

Today we went to North West Trek. While we were in North West Trek we went on a "Tram" that gave us a tour of the animals and the view. Some of the animals came so close that we would be able to touch them but we weren't allowed. One of the animals that we saw quite often were the Bison. Whilst on the tram we saw Moose, Elk, Caribou and black tailed Deer. I still can't tell the difference between an elk, caribou or a deer. Moose have weird noses/snouts, that is how I can tell them apart.  

This is one of the bull bison

Baby bison, so cute!!

This is how close the bison get, less than a metre away

We have to go very slowly across the bull
bison, just encase they hurt us

This calf was just walking around, there
 were the rest of the family
blocking the road

We think that this is an Elk

This is a Deer

This is a moose

The antlers of the Elk fall off in spring, American spring.
Their antlers grow 1/4 inch - 1.1/2 inches a DAY!

From Astonishing Jane

The day was amazing. Wow, growing up in a land of flightless birds, you read about all these woodland and forest and prairie animals and find it hard to believe. It was so cool to see all the animals you have only heard about until now.

But, on the way home via a town that we thought would be big enough to sell a tub of ice cream (but it wasn't) the spectacular views of Mt Rainier seen yesterday were replaced by a thick layer of cloud. Oh, I hope it clears as we are going there tomorrow, I thought.

On coming back to base at Tanwax Lake, we found that our Mt Rainier plans had been cancelled due to forest fires closing roads. That explained the missing mountain. Then the sky got weird.

 

a good two hours before scheduled sunset

closer to sunset, the sun bright red

The night before, since being out in the middle of nowhere, the first place without street lights, we decided to get a good look at the stars. West is easy to find, the sunsets are simply stunning night after night. So, it followed that finding the other points of the compass would be easy. Then, translate those constellations we see in our northern night sky (inverted) would be in the current south. We looked up, hopeful. Stars were bright and visible, but we had no clue what we were seeing. The smoke filled sky won't help us tonight, even if we did think to consult a map.

On another note, I have busily been baking GF chocolate chip cookies every few days to keep the troops happy. It's the fail safe, go to recipe that I have used for so many years that it has been memorised completely. It is an adventure working out just HOW to achieve this each time though, as each place I stay has a varying array of the equipment that is right for the job.

not all perfect, but yum all the same.

By:spectacular Jonty
We also saw some black bears on the Northwest Trek. One of the bears was digging a den to get ready for hibernating in the Winter. There was supposed to be a 'feeding frenzy' at 2pm, but the male bear (who was digging the den) was sleeping so the feeding frenzy was delayed until 2:34pm.

The male black bear going into his den

He was not waking up, so the keeper threw a green pear close to the den. After a few minutes the bear woke up and sniffed out the pear (because they have the second best smelling sense) and he stumbled his way to the pear and then ate it.

Finally, he went to his holding cage ('den') and so another keeper went out and put out some fruit and vegetables, some salmon and some large ice popsicles for the bears to chomp on. The keeper makes it hard for the bears to get their food - this is called 'behavioural enrichment' (it was not very hard to find the food though).

(def) frenzy: uncontrolled excitement and wild behaviour. We didn't see any of that! The bears were so slow at eating the food. I got bored.

Can you find a salmon tail with a black bear?

The black bear taking the salmon to his den

By:Amazing Logan

It was a hot day the Coyotes, the Bobcats, the cougars, the Lynx and all other animals were...ASLEEP! 

This is for today, but the high temp is about the same as yesterday.

I want to tell you about the wetland creatures, who were also mostly asleep.

Raccoons are devilish creatures that look like gangsters. They have the ability to climb trees and are powerful enough to take down a snake.

The raccoon posing for the camera

The wolverine never woke up. So, no facts whatsoever for you.

Asleep in the hay

The otters were in a frenzy of activity; flipping, racing and zooming in the water. They came quite close to the glass. (flip through the pictures.....)

The beavers were asleep for a long, long, long time with six of them all piled on top of each other.

They have big, long, red teeth and we assume they are that colour because of the wood they gnaw through to make dams.

A few hours later, two woke up and they looked like they high-5 the crowd underwater, through the glass. But Dad took photos from on top, so you can't see this.

Fishers are like weasels; small, skinny, stealthy and they love to eat....porcupines. Surprisingly, the porcupine enclosure is right next to the fishers, which we thought was a bit unfair on both animals. They slept until feeding, which was a tiny bit more exciting that the bear feeding time, but still not a frenzy.