FIFTY STATES AWAYToday we were lucky enough to have a fairly active day, it’s quite nice to be out of the car for a bit at times. As it’s Sunday we can’t do anything with the car so we’ve decided to just go and have some fun. After our brilliant day at yellowstone we popped back out arriving rather late in the evening at a town called St Anthony’s in Idaho. Waking rested the beautiful sunny day started with a short drive through farm land and fields. We were headed to the sand dunes! Something completely new to the both of us and something we wanted to take advantage of.
Our plan was to go sand sledding, something I only ever imagined doing in the snow. There was an opportunity to rent atv’s and otvs, however, having already had a blast on an atv back in Tennessee it was time for something new! Reaching the dunes was a little unbelievable, if I didn’t know better I would have assumed we were in the middle of a desert, not Idaho, it was incredible! We hired our boards and got out there.
One thing we didn’t count on was the immense energy it takes to walk up one of the huge sand banks in order to slide back down! On average Ben would say the Dunes were around 50ft high! Its a strange concept and an even stranger thing to do, we had to wax the bottom of the boards before being able to slide down. We were told that if you get a face full of sand you didn’t put enough on, and with that off we went for an exhilarating slide down! I was trying to be extremely careful because of my wrist (blasted carpel tunnel) so Ben was much more daring than me. After a couple of hours we were exhausted and ready to head off onto yet another adventure.
A short 25 minute drive later and we were finally here at Yellowstone Bear World! We were so intrigued by the glimpse we had yesterday at Yellowstone National Park we really wanted to see more! We’d heard about this place on the radio as well as it turning up in our research so I was especially pleased to finally be here. Upon arrival we realised that the first part of a trip to bear world begins with a drive through the enclosures of many great animals. Our first stop saw us pass deer which followed on with Ben having to try to budge an elk out of the way, we were told to just keep driving at 3mph and it would move.
The park also had a rare albino elk, which was the last of the long legged animals. As we rounded the corner, we were let through a special gate and we entered the bear area. Finally it was time to get a real good look at both black and brown bears. It was a tremendous experience to come so close to these animals! There were a number of bears sleeping, whilst a few were up and about playing together. We also saw one bear having a good scratch against a tree, and one of his friends climbing in the trees.
At this point we couldn’t ask for more but the day kept giving. After a fun if slightly tense drive through the unfenced bears we made it to the main site and of course the gift shop. At this point I decided to have a bit of fun by slipping on a bear mask!
We carried on through the complex reaching the petting zoo, where they had some of my favourites; goats! I stroked the wirey little things before moving round to look at other animals such as the chickens and ducks. They had some free roaming deer here that you were allowed to stroke, there was a penned off section where they could go and hold up in when they had had enough fuss and unfortunately when I got there they had retreated.
This was fine with me as we moved to our next activity here, baby bears! There were roughly six very playful little bears in a large enclosure, surrounded by rocks, tree stumps and toys. They are fairly good climbers and seemed to love having a go. Extremely entertaining to watch as they played with the toys and each other. I picked a quiet spot and set myself up getting low to the ground to watch, they seemed intrigued by this coming closer, enabling me to get some fantastic photos. At one point one of the little cuties stood up to have a good look at me, before being scared off by a rather shrieky women who seemed to pop out of nowhere and then proceed to apologise for getting so excited and scaring the bears off.
What a wonderful time we’ve had 🙂 the rest of the day was spent driving south east to a town called Jackson in Wyoming. The drive offered spectacular views of snow capped mountains.
