I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it feels to breathe invisible air and have sane August temperatures! When we left Idaho it was in the triple digits and fires were just beginning to become out of control. I read yesterday they had declared an emergency for the fire around Homedale and the big one in Baker City took out a family member’s 2500 acres and their three homes.
My mom and son were both born in Port Angeles so the first order of business was to see if the grandparent’s house and my grandfather’s barber shop were still in existence. We got lucky on the house, but all that’s left of Grandpa’s barber shop is the painted pole on the outside of the building he used to occupy. The entire building is now Zak’s Bar, and to read Yelp, it’s one of the worst waterfront dives in town. Grandpa’s shop was called “Wallace’s Tonsorial Parlor”.
After that we took a day to go visit the Olympic Game Farm outside of Sequim. I’d never been there before despite having lived here briefly for a few years. We had more fun than should be legal! You stay in your car and can’t have any open parts in your car, such as the sun roof, etc. The animals are well training to come and eat treats out of your hand and in many cases we had the entire head of the animal inside with us, searching for hand outs. Some of these animals are retired and current movie “stars” in some Disney movies. They used to have the bear “Gentle Ben” from the old tv series “Grizzly Adams”. It goes without saying that the grizzly bears are behind fences and you don’t feed them. I suspect at least two were actually Kodiak bears as they were quite a bit larger than the usual grizzly, but then again they’re not in the wild and regularly fed, so that could account for their size also. All of these photos were taken without a zoom lens so the distance you see is the actual distance.
Painted pole-all that’s left of Wallace’s Tonsorial Parlor.
William and Alta Wallace original home. Port Angeles, Washington
The bison were intimidating, to be honest. Mellow? Oh yes, but when you’re sitting in a car and are looking eye to eye with an animal that weighs 2-3 tons and could smash your car door in just by accidentally bumping up against it, it makes you think. Which is why: A] you have to sign a waiver just before entering holding the farm for any auto damage and 2] you’re supposed to keep moving and not stop. The reason is pretty simple. They’ll box you in and you’ll get stuck in the middle of a bunch of jostling behemoths all vying for treats. And you really don’t want to be there when that happens. As it was, I had to put on a bit of speed to keep the bison from running after us,as well as toss food out and away from us to gain some distance. I was also really mindful of the tourists this past year in Yellowstone who were gored by a wild bison. If I went back, I don’t think I’d drive in that portion of the park again.
There were several wolves, racoons, tigers, a coyote or two, cougar and bobcat but they were behind no less than 3 wired fences and seeing them was difficult and the camera had a hard time focusing on anything other than the wires. After we left though, there is a small petting area with goats and I watched someone go into a wolf cage and handed the wolf something, while he pet it. So these are by no means true wild animals and I understand why they keep them so securely. A lot of reviews on Yelp, etc talk about how horrible the cages were. Yes, they are securely behind fences but they also have a shaded, secure box area to get into for shade and privacy, and the cages are almost 1/4 of an acre in size. They’re not pretty, they don’t have trees, babbling brooks or other amenities but this isn’t a zoo, it’s a game farm and again, these animals are as domesticated as one can expect from a wild animal. I don’t like to judge the park on this issue as everything else in the park is stunning, green and manicured. They’ve also been in operation for well over 40 years so if there were animal abuse going on, they’d have been out of business a long time ago. Every animal we saw had access to fresh water and looked well fed, with glossy coats.
There were a couple of people who didn’t keep moving in the bison enclosure and ended up with a few scratches from horns and one car had a dent in the door most likely from a huge head that was tossed sideways.
bigpurplebus 