Garbage, Eagles, and Bears, oh my!

Sadly (to put it mildly), Josh's visit and whirl-wind tour of Red Lake has come and gone. We did most of the things on the list from the previous post, but one of the highlights was definitely our visit to the dump. If you're not from Red Lake, I bet that sounds like the biggest white trash (no pun intended) activity on earth. Well, suspend your judgement for a moment...

Where can you find the Berenstain Bears in a recession? At the landfill! We drove up in my dad's pickup to have a look, and we didn't get 20 feet from the front gate before we spotted FIFTEEN big black bears chowing down on some trash. We were quite cautious at first, but then we noticed several people unloading garbage and driving almost right next to this giant cluster of black bears, and we followed suit. They looked up from time to time, but mostly they didn't care

about the extra company and continued to contently rummage and nibble.

These bears sure aren't starving...

We thought this giant bird wasn't real at first since we went almost right up to it and it didn't

move the whole time. Any idea what it might be? Underneath it is one of many bald eagles hanging out supervising the whole ordeal.

This guy diving into the Teddy Bear Peanut Butter was my favourite :)

After a good half hour of bear watching, we eventually left, as Josh put it, "before we got TOO comfortable". Probably a smart move. There were no cubs in sight, but by the end we found ourselves calling out to them so they would look at us and we'd get better pictures. As docile as these animals appeared at the moment, they certainly are still wild, unpredictable creatures with really bad tempers.