Since we never were lucky enough to get any photos of grizzly bears in the wild, we decided to visit Bear Country USA in Rapid City, SD, which offers visitors views of most North American mammals. Visitors take a three-mile drive through several enclosures where the encounter black bear, elk, reindeer, mule deer, cougars, bobcats, rocky mountain goats, bighorn sheep, dall sheep and bison. Here and there throughout the park were wooden towers with armed guards, ready to take action if anything should go wrong.
The collection of black bears was quite amazing! They had every size and color phase imaginable, from the lightest "blond" to the darkest black. (At first I thought the brown and blond bears were grizzlies, but after looking at the photos, I realized they were not. Supposedly the park has grizzlies, but apparently they were not on display.) Many of the bears had unkempt, matted fur -- not sure if that happens in the wild, but I have never seen a wild bear that looked like that.
There must have been at least 100 bears in a very large enclosure. As we drove through, some were lounging in a pool of water, and others were ambling about, crossing the road in front of cars, climbing on logs, etc. Suddenly they all began running in one direction -- they had heard the truck coming with their food. They all gathered around the truck as the attendant shoveled out what appeared to be vegetables and possibly bread. They squabbled among themselves, with some running off with tasty morsels, and other pursuing.
It was interesting to get some close-up photos of huge elk shedding the velvet from their antlers. Other highlights were a very light-colored "white" bison, wild asses, and a bighorn sheep with fantastic horns.
This place made me a little sad, since most of the animals were lethargic, with many sleeping or just lying down looking through the fences. I couldn't even bring myself to take pictures of the cougars -- they had six of them in two small, heavily fenced enclosures. I couldn't get shots of the arctic wolves, reindeer, mule deer and mountain goats, since all were asleep or lying down out of sight.
More in Part 3
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