This picture was taken during our trip to West Yellowstone the weekend after Thanksgiving. I am ashamed to say that we supported the "save the wolves and the grizzlies" movement by going to the Grizzly Bear and Grey Wolf Discovery Center. It was pretty cool.



There were a dozen or so bears at the Discovery Center, but our favorites were Sam and Illie. They were taken from Alaska when they became nuisance bears. They were by far the largest bears there: Sam was over 1100 lbs., Illie was about 900 lbs.

The workers at the Discovery center only let 2-4 bears out at a time because they fight if there's more than that. The bears are out for 2 hours at a time. After the bears go in, workers hide food under rocks and logs, and then they let a new set of bears out. It was pretty cool to watch the bears digging around looking for their "snack". (The workers said that they feed the bears 14 times a day. Where do I sign up? I bet it wouldn't take me long to measure up to Sam and Illie!!) We got this picture of Sam chewing on a deer leg that was donated to the center by a local hunter.