Grey Wolf Lodge

We've arrived in Orr!
Before I detail our wonderful day, I must rave about our digs for the rest of the week! The Grey Wolf Lodge is the shizzle (awesome)! This cabin is just perfect! We’re literally ON THE LAKE. There’s the cabin, maybe two feet of earth, rocks and trees, and then the lake. The weather has been off and on sunny and rainy all day (and quite cold), the kind of weather that is so cool to watch rolling in over a massive lake. Sunny on one side, and rain streaking into the water on the other side, I love it! There are a flock of giant pelicans, a loon couple and a group of 4 quacking ducks that have already graced us with their presence. We can’t wait to grill out tomorrow evening, have a fire in the fire pit and roast marshmallows for s’mores!



So, to the highlights of the day! We started our day out with the free breakfast of waffles and hard boiled eggs (and a couple of bananas for the road) and made our way in the rain up to Ely. We came upon the North American Bear Center almost as abruptly as the Wellstone memorial yesterday and screeched into the lot around 10:30 am. There must have been over 30 televisions all with video clips of Lily and Hope (if you haven’t been following Lily and Hope the bears, you must Google for the cuteness), and of the resident bears at the center, Lucky, Honey and Teddy. Lucky was an orphaned cub that has adopted Honey, an adorable, rotund, honey-colored female, and Teddy, a large, soft-eyed, gentle black bear, as his foster parents. They are all just sweet as can be, and it was cool to see all the video clips of Lucky getting used to the big bears as he grew into the adolescent bear he is now, but not half as neat as getting to see them all up close and in person!! They have an elevated outdoor observation deck and an indoor glass observation area at ground level. We took a boatload of photos of the bears, and even got to see the crew feeding the bears grapes, apples and nuts!! There were tons of birds (including a snappy little bluejay that was dominating the area, even stealing some of the nuts from the bears!), tiny red squirrels and chipmunks everywhere! It felt a little like Snow White’s forest creature’s frolicking in the wild, all that was missing were the dwarves. Well, and the Disney princess ;)

Honey


Teddy


Lucky


Red Squirrel


Blue Jay


Then we went to the International Wolf Center, had a quick lunch in the car (mmm, leftover pulled pork for me and peanut butter for John), and got to take a ton more pictures! The wolves were incredible, I have to say. There was an unidentifiable carcass that they were sharing, in turn, and it was exciting to see the four young wolves interact. Their pack nature is apparent as the subordinates always step down to the alpha male and females. We learned a whole bunch of interesting things like: only the alpha male and females will lift their legs to pee, the betas (males and females) always keep four paws on the ground and squat! And only the alpha male and female typically reproduce, the others only help the care of the pups. They had a large exhibit indoors, too, with tons of cool stuff, including a book with different folklore stories about werewolves (which I couldn’t read through because I was too excited about seeing actual wolves, but maybe I’ll look up the folklore books in the library this winter when there’s nothing else to do) and an exhibit with all the different sounds, whimpers, calls and howls they make. We also watched a video on coyotes which was neat. There were tons of movies, lectures and exhibits to see, but I pretty much only had eyes for the actual wolves :)







A dinner of brats and baked beans, a wander around the lodge grounds and hanging out on our dock, and now it’s late and John’s already curled up with his depressing Kurt Vonnegut book (Slaughter House Five), so I’m going to join him and read my children’s fantasy by Julia Golding (Secrets of the Sirens) before we cash in for night. John stepped outside but said it was too pitch black to see anything, all he could hear was the water lapping against the dock. Ahhh. Peace.

Nitey-nite, bitey-bite!
Love to all, R&J