Northwest Trek

Today we took a trip to Northwest Trek, courtesy of the school district!  This was a science field trip that is part of our Washington State unit.  My children were supposed to experience native wildlife...Keep in mind that this is our backyard (with a dog)...

...And this is NW Trek (with a bison)...

 there really wasn't too much for them to learn, especially at first.

The first section of the park was disappointing.  We were supposed to be seeing cats: bobcat, cougar, and lynx.  Every single cat was hiding in its enclosure.  I don't really blame them.  There were lots of kids from schools running around and screaming.  I would have hidden too. We asked ourselves, "Why did we drive all this way to look at plants? We could do that in our backyard!"  But the weather was great and so was the exercise (for me), so we persevered.

The first creature we saw was this piece of wood that confused S.  It looked like some kind of monster peering out from between the trees.  After that we were no longer disappointed.  We saw...

 ...wolves...

...bears (and a bunch of other things).  Then we took the tram ride and got to see the herbivores.

 Bison (with babies)

Elk

Moose (you can't see it in the picture.  There are only three moose in the whole park and seeing them is very rare.  We spotted her though!)  The tram driver told of a cougar that sneaked into the park and feasted on bison burgers, lamb chops, and chocolate moose until it was captured, tagged, and moved elsewhere.  Within a week (or so) of moving the cougar, it was killed by a car.  S did not like that the poor cougar was kicked out of the park and hit by a car, just because he was hungry!  (He is, after all, part of the food chain and natural).

M wasn't sure we could make it through the entire 55 minute tram ride with D, but we did.  He enjoyed making faces at the other kids and pointing to the animals.  I sat with the girls with the boys in the seat next to us.  The hardest thing was reminding them not to accidentally pull the emergency cord.

After our tram ride was over, we went to the children's hands-on house.  E got to see a slug!  WOW!  A real live SLUG! Like we've never seen one of those before...  While we were there, M asked a park employee if they fed the extra herbivores to the carnivores.  The carnivores actually get special food processed just for zoo creatures.  They no longer have to hunt.  Hmmm... I'm thinking this "park" of native "wildlife" in its "natural habitat" isn't as wild or natural as we think...

...speaking of wild and natural and hunting...I was not too interested in the eagles (those chicken-killers).  We see those all the time.  But I liked the pictures we took.  My coyote and raccoon pictures were blurry, which is okay.  We see those all the time here too (those chicken-killers).

Before we headed home, a nice lady offered to take our picture.  So here we are, including my big baby belly.