A little Catch Up (pic heavy)

I have been a poor blogger lately. Lots opportunities and not taking them. Nice.
The house has been repainted from a dreary brown on brown combo to a nice shade of blue grey with a purplish navy blue trim. A huge improvement. Somehow, I got out of any work. Not sure how that happened. *shrugs*

I took Peanut to NW Trek last week. It was so much fun! We had lunch before going, since I wasn't sure if the food would be dodgy or not. We were able to watch a few ladies training a year old Red Tail Hawk...


They told us that he had been a rescue. The previous place had been careful to not imprint him, but after releasing him, they had to re-rescue him. He was eventually brought to NW Trek, and they are now training him to be a part of the learning programs there.

We then walked over and checked out the bears! We saw two black bears. One was busy napping (I wish I had been too, it was a loooong day) and the other was foraging for berries and probably bugs. They were very laid back...


We then visited the Brown (grizzly) Bears. There were two here also, and one was napping,


the other seemed to be chewing on something verrrrry stretchy and rubbery. Probably a piece of meat? It was kinda gross. Peanut said it was a noodle. OK!


We then queued up to ride the trolly through the free range enclosure. This was very cool! The only complaint I had was the driver didn't make nice stops to enable better photos. A lot of mine were blurred or completely missed, as I would not have enough time to properly focus and get a nice composition. Oh well, pass a tissue, right? ;)

We saw lots of different animals. I was going to post all of them, but I think instead, I share a few here, and you can see the rest over on flickr.

Here is a MOOSE! She is around a year old..

And an ELK! He was a part of the bachelor herd, and decided to 'show off' (or scare us?) He was tossing his head back an forth. There was about half a dozen or more males in this spot

We climbed a 2000 foot elevation, and had this beautiful view

We could see a water tower glinting about 5 miles away.

There was a spinners dream! Fiber! A herd of it...

Ok, actually they're buffalo (BISON!) We even got to see a small group right next to the trolly, a mom and her calf...

There was this spectacular tree grouping


And I learned about Madrona Trees. They only grow within 50 miles of the ocean, and shead their barks, The are also part of the Evergreen Family of trees and are found along the Western coast. Very cool.

We also had a little 'fishing' trip to Millersyvania State Park. I love this park. I had wanted to get married here, but realized the husbands side of the family would have baulked at the drive from Seattle area.. any how, to save you the long wait for even more pictures to load, I'll post a second entry... :)

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