Northwest Trek Family Camp Saturday Evening

 Helping out

 Making our nametags

 Making enrichments for the animals

 The NW Trek moose

 Hanging the enrichments on the beavers' glass.

 Sam and a bear

 Gabby and a wolf

 We played hide and seek using wolf howls.

 S'mores time

Lights out

The kids and I went to Northwest Trek's Family Camp this weekend. I thought it looked like my kind of camping - the kind where you don't have to worry about food or building the fire.  I admit this took a little bravery on my part. I would never have tried this last time. But Sam's out of diapers and getting bigger and Gabby has become very helpful so I thought it might work this go 'round. I worried most about rain and it being too cold to sleep (imagine in August!) In the end, we had a great time and the kids did well. They helped and stayed with me and listened (mostly). We were not without mishap and I admit Sam left the park crying today (falling down + being worn out) but it was overall fun and good and I would do it again alone.

Northwest Trek is a zoo that only has animals native to the NW. They try to present the animals as naturally as possible. I like it better than the full fledged zoo. They do a few of these camps each summer, this being the last one for this year. The camp was not full but had a good number of people - 18 folks from 6 families. It might not be as fun if it were full (crowded). You go on Saturday afternoon and set up your campsite, make nametags and animal enrichments, and then have a camper meeting. After the meeting there is time for supper, either in the cafe in the park (which we did) or bring your own. They did build a fire in case you wanted to cook on it. We took a tram ride at 615, after the last ride of the day. It was nice b/c we could take a little longer than normal and also because it was late in the day and lots of the animals were out. We saw everything they have in the free roaming area, including three of the four moose. Animals around every curve. 

After the tram ride we went to the wetland area and hung our enrichment items on the glass in the underwater/downstairs part for the animals - beavers, otters, fishers, etc. They were starting to wake up for the night and we were now the only people in the park. After enjoying them for a while we went to the theater for a quick talk about wolves and how the communicate. We learned to howl and yip and bark like wolves. Then we went out in to the park for a wolf hide and seek. One of the leaders hid and the rest of us had to find communicating like wolves. It was getting dark in the park and it was kind of creepy howling and going through there. Sam got a little spooked but it was lots of fun. We finally located her in front of the wolf exhibit. All of our howling had woken them up but we never could get them to howl with us. Since it was now nearly dark, we headed back to the campsite and enjoyed some s'mores before turning in for the night about 10. One benefit to being the last group of the summer was that we could have as many s'mores as we wanted. Not too helpful for sleeping, however.