Monday, August 29, 2011

Oswald's Bears

As I mentioned in my last post, the whole point of going to the U.P. a few weeks back was to visit Oswald's Bear Ranch and hopefully get inspired. While we would have loved to spend another day lounging by the lake we dutifully packed our gear and left Pretty Lake.

We got to Oswald's later than I would have liked as it took us longer to pack up than I expected, so it was already on the warm side when we arrived. But the bears weren't hiding in the shade--probably lured by folks tossing apple slices over the fence.



Ah yes, the fence. A necessary evil when you need to contain 26 bears. It does, however, make it pretty darned difficult to get decent photos. Well, I shot away anyhow, looking mostly for poses and composition. This bear nibbled on some weeds as we passed.



Lisa and Lori forged ahead while I straggled, taking pics. Lori left her camera in the back seat of her daughter's car the week before so had to resort to sketching.



I did my best to get some close ups for detail. Such expressive eyes!



We worked our way around the park. As we neared the gift shop Lori, who had moved on ahead, yelled to us that they had one of the cages open. Wha...? I scurried over.

Sweet!


Nothing but a few strands of electric fence between us and these pre-pubescent males. I don't know off-hand how many bears were in there but it was at least five.



They did all sorts of cute stuff, which isn't hard for bears. They're pretty darned cute doing nothing at all.


This made me a bit uneasy, kind of a "Planet of the Bears" moment. They look so natural standing like this. We should be thankful they don't have thumbs....


What did I say about cute?





No comments:

Post a Comment