Off to Eatonville, Washington on the bus this morning. Why? To go to North West Trek, an animal park about an hour or so’s drive south of Seattle. I was last there about 20 years’ ago, and I was pleased that it had hardly changed.
We started with the two grizzly bear cubs (less than 12 months old), which are only on display twice a day for about 2 hours each time) Next was the 3-carriage trolley safari bus thing to see the large prey animals on the 435 acres of open land — bison, elk, black-tailed deer, wild sheep, moose, etc. Awesome stuff, but as it rained quite a bit today, most of my photos didn’t turn out very well.
After the trolley tour, we were on our own until lunch. I walked to the wolf and fox exhibits, but saw nothing (if they had any sense, they were sheltered out of the rain). Next were the cats — I saw the back of a bobcat sleeping in the humpy, no cougars, and a lynx. The owls on display were the snowy owl (his photo came out looking like a bright white blob!), barn owl, golden eagle, and turkey vulture. Others also saw the otters and raccoons, but I didn’t get there,
After we got back to the hotel, a few of us went to the top of the Columbia Center (73rd floor) for some amazing views over Seattle. We had a few drinks up there as the sun set, then made out way back to the hotel to pack. The drink in the photos below was sort of like a margarita, but with red wine poured over a spoon on the top, and an ‘eyeball’ for Halloween (it was really a bubble gum encased in a hard sugar coating). It was as nice as it looked!
Roosevelt elk (male with antlers)
Bison bison
There’s a grizzly bear cub in there!
Bison bison
Seattle at sunset from the 73rd floor
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
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