A Northwest Trek tour really has two parts.  You get taken around the 435 acre “free-range” area in a tram where you check out all the “safe” animals (the herbivores), and then you walk around what I guess you would consider a traditional zoo and check out the “dangerous” ones (the carnivores).

The tram ride is awesome.  The deer, moose and bison come right up to the tram and you get to see them in a way you never would in the wild.  The walking part though can be a bit of a disappointment.  I’ve visited Northwest Trek twice now and the carnivores really aren’t great.  This visit they were all hiding, we didn’t really see anything.  We stood in front of a large enclosure that said Grizzly Bear and all we could see was trees and bushes.  This same thing happened with the Black Bear, Bobcat, Cougar, Lynx, Wolf, Fox and Coyote.  We didn’t see any of them.

However there were a few animals on the walking tour we did see.  One of them was the raccoon.  There were two of them in a relatively small enclosure (always seems a little cruel to me) and they were very playful.  Interestingly none of these enclosures had bars, animals were separated from us by water or electric fences.  While this was good for us (nothing in the way) it seemed a little crappy for the animals.

Anyway the two raccoons were playing together (may have been fighting I don’t know – I’m no raccoon expert), they were climbing on some fallen trees and jumping on each other.  They move pretty fast so it was hit or miss if the pictures came out in focus and I took one fantastic pic with one of the raccoon’s hanging from a branch by one leg staring straight into the camera – but it wasn’t sharp enough to post.

In the end I liked the picture below.  This raccoon was posing almost to camera and stood still long enough for me to get this shot.  Would have been better if I had got the raccoon’s feet in too, but you can’t have everything.

Tonight the guys wanted to have a little party, they had some music, did a little dancing…