Today we finally visit Bearizona a place we wanted to visit since it opened in 2010 but somehow we never made it prior to today. We start quite early to avoid the rush of people, and this is a great decision. We start on the drive through section and the first animals are the mountain goats, they are quite placid and do not care about the cars.
The reindeer and deer are next and with the feeding areas close by we see them quite intimately. They are quite used to tourists also and do not care about the cars passing by.
Next are the burros, we have seen quite a few of them before so we pass through relatively fast, we want to see the wolves and bears.
And then we enter the wolves enclosure, there are two subspecies here, Arctic and Tundra wolves. The Arctic wolves are especially active calling on and marking the territory while the Tundra wolves do their best to ignore them to the Arctic wolves indignation.
Interestingly there is a small made up village here in the middle of the wolves enclosure allowing us to imagine different scenarios when someone would use the hotel here or be imprisoned in the jail and what would happen to them.
Next is the enclosure that gives the animal park the name, the one for black bears. They are everywhere, some patrolling the enclosure, some looking for food and some…..sleeping in trees?
Still the majority of those sleeping are more bear like sleeping in artificial caves or preparing for that. Not sure if they are already gone to sleep for the winter or are just lazy, but interesting to see nevertheless.
After the wolves and bears it is time for bisons. There is a small herd here that seems to be on the increase given the number of young ones in the herd.
The last section of the drive through passes by pronghorn antelopes and then bighorn sheep before depositing us in a large parking lot. It is now time to exit and explore on foot the more zoo like portion of Bearizona.
Entering the zoo section we pass a small gift shop and some snack stations as we get our bearings and look for the animals displayed here.
There is a beaver and a porcupine but both are asleep, the same cannot be said about the javelinas and especially badgers which are quite active moving back and forth.
We really like the foxes, both the Arctic and Red fox are really photogenic. And they now how to pose for photos….
We then continue exploring before the crowds of people draw us to another exhibit and soon we understand why. The grizzly bears are here and they are a major attraction given the tourist traffic to their exhibit.
Next are what we assume are the last animals, the beautiful bobcats and the playful otters before we enter the large gift shop which we assume is the end of the zoo.
We explore the gift shop for a while buying a few souvenirs and looking at the restaurant menu and then we notice there is another exit and out we go to explore.
And here there are two more exhibits, the panther one and the elk one. Both are interesting and we stay a while before returning to the gift shop then the entrance and then the car, it is time to leave Bearizona.
We don’t go far however, just literally a few hundred of meters to a short section of old route 66. This is to explore the road a bit and find a few caches.
The section is only a few hundred meters long but it is always fun to walk on these abandoned roads and see how nature is taking it over. We walk for a while and find about four caches before we return to the car and then drive to Williams to eat lunch.
