Bearizona....in Arizona!! State 3

Driving on the freeway in Arizonia we came across this.....

...how could we just drive past??? Real bears!! Wow, How cool is that??

It is a drive through park, and they warn you, DO NOT GET OUT OF THE CAR. If the bears come over to the car , drive off slowly. How excited were we?? Just a little. A little bit scared, and a little bit excited.

First up we came across Bison. Ok, but where are the Bears?? We want bears!! Although the Bison were pretty cool, and big.....

Next, were the White wolfves. Now, none of these animals are in cages, they are in paddocks with large fences, and we drove over cattle grates into their yards to get to them. Its all pretty cool I must say. We could wind down our windows to take photos, but if they came up to us, up went the window. Yay, for power windows!!

This wolf looked cranky!
Next paddock had Black Bears!! Little ones though....this one was having a lay down. No fear he was gonna come bounding in our window, so down it went. We felt safe :-)

He was so cute, I could have just run up to him and cuddled him...he didn't look scary at all....unlike the wolf!

Then into the next paddock was the BIG Black Bears, and sitting in the middle of the road was this big fella. As relaxed as ever, basking in the sun. Now we had to drive off road to get around him. I was scared at first as we were right next to him on the road, I didn't want to wind the window down for Robert to take the photo as he was right next to the car!! That's how close he was to us. But Robert was saying, it's ok, he isn't moving. So, I figured, the travel insurance is all paid up...he's telling me to wind the window down, I have the master control of the windows, if all else fails, I can quickly wind them up, "just get the damn photo now, hurry!!"

As it turned out, the bear didn't care less, he see's tourists all day long, and was posing for us. Loved it. I reakon he wanted a tip for it....

Here I am posing with a Bear that won't bite, but he wasn't as cuddly as the other ones looked. Behind me you can see the huge timber fence that surrounded the rest of the park that housed some smaller Bears that were in some encosures similar to the ones at Western Plains Zoo, with a water moat along the edge separating them from us. It also included a gift shop, bbq area, toilets etc
In the gift shop was a little humidicrib which had a tiny 3moth old baby bear cub. The cub had been the runt of the litter had only just survived. He was doing really well now, and was ever so cute and fluffy, but was snoozing away in his little warm bed.

Bearizona was a great find, that we just stumbled upon. There is another on in Rapid City, near Mount Rushmore, but it was closed for the season. (We hadn't been there as this stage) Lucky for us, this one was open. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

Tomorrow, the amazing Monument Valley. Our favourite!!