Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Glacier Animals

This post has been a long time coming, all summer in fact. I wanted to show some of the animals we've seen this summer, but I didn't want to do so until I had a picture of the Grizzly.

Well, finally, we got a couple of pictures of that awesome creature. The pics were taken through a spotting scope, so they aren't the best. But, we were able to watch these two bears for over an hour one recent afternoon. They were spotted in the Many Glacier area, in a meadow above and behind the Swift Current Motor Inn.

The other animals shown shouldn't be discounted either. They are all spectacular to see and enjoyable to watch, in their own right.

There are two or three groupings of Black Bears and these are all separate instances where we saw them. We were really lucky this summer from that standpoint.

Well, only one more week and this summer is over. Donna closes Lake McDonald Lodge at noon on Sunday, September 28. We will leave Hungry Horse on October 1 and travel toward Yellowstone National Park. We plan to spend at least a week there and if we're really lucky, we may get to see another Grizzly. It's the time of year, too, when the Elk do their bugling. This is an eerie sound that I understand has to do with their mating. I heard them in September 2006 when I camped in Yellowstone for a couple of nights.

After Yellowstone, we plan to roam on down through Utah, visiting Arches NP, Canyonlands NP, Capital Reef NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Zion NP and if it's still open, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. After that, we have some tentative plans but I won't go into them here.

Hopefully, I'll be able to do a few posts as I travel this fall and winter.

I hope you've all enjoyed viewing these as much as I have had sharing my adventures.

Life is really good for me right now and I hope everyone is doing OK as well.

Enjoy.

Deer and Moose near Hungry Horse Reservoir.

Deer and Fawn

Black Bear in Waterton-Glacier NP, Canada


Chipmunk
Mountain Goats at Goat Lick



Big Horn Sheep crossing snow field near Logan's Pass
Mountain Goats near Logan's Pass
Young Buck in Avalanche Creek Picnic area

Dear near Reservoir
Moose and calf behind Swift Current Inn


Twin fawns at Lake McDonald Lodge

Whistle Pig mother and new family at lake McDonald Lodge


Doe and fawn in Waterton-Glacier NP, Canada

Black Bear cub in Waterton-Glacier NP, Canada
Moose and twin calves near Many Glacier
Black Bear near Golden, BC, Canada

Mountain Goat and baby near Golden, BC, Canada
Gray Jay
Maybe a Ptarmagin ???
And last, but not least
Grizzly bears behind Swift Current Inn. Believed to be a mother and probably 3 year old "cub". The blacker one is the mother and the other is the "cub". In the last picture, you can really see the humps on their backs.