The Wild Pacific Northwest

Last spring we decided to splurge a little and purchase our family a joint membership to the Pt. Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and Northwest Trek.  For those of you who do not know what Northwest Trek is, it is a 725 acre park located northeast of Olympia in Eatonville.  The park consists of lakes, trails and more then 200 North American animals call it home.  They offer a free tram to tour the park.  While on the tram tour you are likely to see bighorn sheep, deer, Roosevelt elk, woodland caribou, mountain goats, bison and more.  

Our membership was set to expire at the end of last month and we still had not made it to NW Trek so we intentioned to do it atleast once before the membership ran out.  The day was perfect for the trip and we set out with sack lunches for the drive, picked Jillian up from preschool and headed out with (mostly) blue sky overhead.

By the time we arrived, there was a chill in the air but our excitement held the chill at bay.  The park is absolutely beautiful and extremely tranquil.  We boarded a 2:00 tram with our tour guide, George and headed out into the wild.  

The first animal we found, aside from some ducks that were swimming in the lake was a bison:

Then we moved on to Elk, Moose and Black tail dear

We also so Big horn sheep and Mountain goats on our journey:

The tour ended with a glimpse of the "bonus animal", a friendly, lake dwelling turtle:

After de-boarding the tram we headed on to the walking exhibits where we saw Eagles, Bears, Foxes, Bobcats, Lynx, Cougars, Racoons, Wolverines,  River Otters and Beavers:

 

We had a great time admiring all of the wildlife in the park and left at closing to head home. Jilly and I appeared to have had enough excitement for the day as we both promptly fell asleep on the trip back to Olympia.