All of Monday was taken up by chores. Worse than usual laundry commotion.....one of the worst laundromats we've ever been in. Clean enough but the place was tiny and very crowded. It was so small people had to push past each other to go down the line of machines. Washers and dryers facing each other down the line with so little room between them that only one door could be opened at a time. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
The rest of the day was groceries, getting propane tanks filled and running some other errands. Nothing exciting at all....except that it snowed all day and never got above 35 degrees which was something we've never experienced in the middle of September. It's just fine for right now. When it gets to 50 below in the middle of winter we won't be anywhere near here.
Today (9/13) we spent most of the day at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. They have a couple of wolf packs and eight grizzly bears along with a number of raptors, all there because they can't live in the wild. We enjoyed the visit and learned a lot about both bears and wolves.
I'm not going to post a lot of pictures of bears but there are a couple worth adding.
There are around two dozen ravens in the bear enclosure, all trying to get whatever scraps they can steal. This bear has such a baleful look on her face, glaring at the raven trying to sidle up next to her.
I read that one of the bears doesn't tolerate ravens at all. I couldn't remember which bear it was but saw there was one the ravens stayed well away from. Guess that was the one.
This is Coram, named for a town in Montana near Glacier National Park. Coram became a nuisance-bear from finding food and garbage around humans. He got way too comfortable around people. After being relocated twice, his last act of freedom was to get in a car with a back seat full of groceries while the groceries were being unloaded. The only options were to kill him or incarcerate him. He's doing very well in captivity and even plays well with others (not common among unrelated grizzlies).
Grizzlies rarely die natural deaths. Most of their deaths are caused by humans in one way or another. The majority of bear-human problems are caused by people either forgetting or refusing to properly handle food and garbage so that bears can't get it. Bears are very intelligent and never forget where they've found food. If people leave pet food out, or put bird feeders where bears can get to them, or don't secure their garbage in bear-proof containers, they will very likely cause a bear to have to be destroyed or confined. If a relocated bear returns a third time it's doomed to one or the other.
Besides being "educator bears," the bears at the center actually have a job to do. They are given bear-proof containers to test. The containers have particularly tasty treats in them so the bears try their best to get into them. If a container can survive 90 minutes of an expert bear trying to break in, it is certified as bear-proof. If the bear does break in the container manufacturer can make modifications and have it tested again. There was a large collection of trash cans on display that had been tested and only two made the grade.
After the grizzlies and wolves, we went to the Yellowstone Historic Center. This painted bison is in front of their building. We've enjoyed lots of artsy buffaloes in various places. What the center had was interesting but there wasn't much there. For a $5 entry fee we'll give anything a try.
This is downtown West Yellowstone, Montana, (yesterday after the snow quit), population estimated at 1,339. It is a very nice little town at this time of year, but we wouldn't want to be here during the three heavy tourist months of June through August. The two grocery stores are quite limited in their space and selections. We can't imagine how they deal with being completely overrun by summer tourists.
Tomorrow's sight-seeing will depend on the weather. So far we haven't had a single weather forecast that's right so we'll just have to see how it looks when we get up.
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