The Birds!

A bald eagle

Michael went on a school field trip with the Wildlife Society. They went to Camas wildlife viewing area to see birds in migration. All of the ponds/ lakes at this place were dried up. No water means no birds. They did get out and walk around for a bit. While they were walking, Michael made his bird noise, you know, the one that sounds like an eagle? Yea, it was epic. A whole bunch of bird nerds and you make a noise like that? There were several people that stopped and were looking all through the sky for what made the noise and a bunch of people that just tried to name what bird it was without even looking, I guess they were trying to sound smart... Michael never told anyone that it was him and I doubt anyone actually thought it was him. So after his disappointing trip, he came home and convinced me we should still make the day a good one. Without further ado we headed up to Harriman State Park.

same bald eagle

The big white ones are swans and the little black ones are coot. Coot can swim but don't have webbed feet, they kinda wiggle their whole body to move on the water.

Giant turkey vulture

We bought this national parks pass last February that gets us into any national or state park in the country. That really came in handy for Glacier and a billion trips to Yellowstone. We also use it when we go to Harriman, since it's a state park, it's included. But there's that stop when you first enter the park where you're supposed to get out and pay and write down your license plate number and all that and we always feel like we're stealing or sneaking in when we just drive right past it. Still makes me nervous even with the pass with us.

Teton Mountains

I couldn't decide if these are 2 different kinds of swans or if some of them are just really dirty. Maybe the whiter ones are girls. 

 Great Grey Owl

My mom got us this super awesome baby backpack thing for Christmas last year so we could include Ivan in our hiking adventures. Boy have we used the life outta that! The frame is aluminum, so lightweight, and it expands to let the kid have more room. Ivan doesn't exactly need more room, since he hasn't really grown at all, but with his winter coat in, it's pretty difficult to squish him into the smaller seat. The only bad thing about making the seat bigger is that it loses the restraints... That sounds weird calling them restraints.

Not quite sure what my face is doing here...
Looks like an angry smile.

The seat belts? We'll use seat belts. I thought that might be an issue at first, but he was pretty well contained with the fluffiness of his coat. So we hiked a couple miles and saw a bunch of birds, mainly swans, geese, ducks, and coot (coots, ceet, cootsen?). At one point we were away from the water and in the woods, so we couldn't even see the water and we heard this strange noise. To me it sounded like hooves running. I thought, sweet maybe we'll see some elk! Michael thought it was antlers either against trees or other antlers. He thought, sweet maybe we'll see some elk! We kept hearing this noise over and over. Now I'm thinking it's the horses in the corral, but we were too far from it to hear them. We get back to the lake and find out how stupid we were. It was just birds flying really close to the water! The weather was pretty nice and we had a lot of fun. Ivan was good, and boy that sure makes all the difference. The height of that backpack puts his mouth right by your ear. You can't just let him cry or you'll go deaf! Thank goodness for graham crackers.

Pelicans

Muskrat! Look at his cute little foot!

Swans, geese, coot. 

Our trip Saturday was so good we went back on Wednesday. We brought Ivan again and hiked a lot farther than before. We hoped to see more of the four legged creatures and only lucked out with a couple creatures. We did have an issue with Ivan's shoes though. He has these really super cute cowboy boots that are my absolute favorite. They zip up the side (easy to put on) and keeps his little legs warmer because his pants get pulled up at the ends in the backpack. He wasn't quite as happy as the last trip and kept rubbing his boots against whoever was carrying him. Rubbing enough to get the boots off his feet. This was kinda annoying, but ok as long as whoever had Ivan was walking in front. I should have just taken his boots off and called it good, he had socks on and it really wasn't that cold. On our last half mile of the trail I decided to walk beside Michael and Ivan. Ivan thought it was hilarious if he could see me. We played peek a boo and I tried everything I could to keep that boy entertained. Then Michael, with his eagle vision, spotted an animal in the field beside us. The animal was quite camouflaged and I was really impressed he saw the animal at all. We still haven't quite decided if it was a wolf or a coyote. He was huge - leaning more towards wolf, alone - could be either animal, his coloring was gray with some red - more coyotes that color but could still be a wolf, and his conformation was more like a wolf - like his ears being a little smaller and snout not pointing up at the end, big thick body.

A beaver bit me!

Beaver dam. We waited around for a bit to see if the little guy would come back. No such luck.

Just after getting a picture of that guy, we heard a chorus of coyote calls. It was amazing! I haven't heard anything like that since moving out here. In Tennessee coyotes are as common as dogs and just as brave as one, they'll almost walk right up to ya. We used to hear them all the time at my parents house. That's also why you have to get your dog's rabies shot every year there but only every 3 years here. There must have been 8 or 10 coyotes though. Oh, and that wolf thing we saw didn't respond to the coyote calls so we really think it was a wolf. Just another 50 feet up the trail, Michael spotted a fox!

Don't look too hard, it's real blurry. The red stuff is the fox. You can see his head in the middle and tail towards the bottom left. 

This little guy was super hard to see because of the wooden fence and the barn and stuff. He looked right at us then ran into the barn. I think foxes are so cute. Ivan dropped his shoe again, and again I put it back on him. We veered off the trail to get to the car sooner and the second we got to the parking lot I noticed Ivan was missing a shoe. It was just getting to the point of dusk and getting harder to see. Ivan was tired of being in the backpack and Michael and I were both tired of walking. So being the manly man he is, Michael ran back a half mile or so (back to where we saw the wolf and even a little farther) looking for the shoe. Did I mention his boots were brown with some camouflage on them? Yea, super hard to see on the ground. I even took Ivan's other shoe and put it on the ground just to see what it would look like. Part of the reason we went back to Harriman that day was because the weather was calling for a good bit of snow the next day and throughout the weekend. Wednesday was out last chance to be there. So if we didn't find the shoe right then before we left, we probably weren't going to find it. I parked the car facing the part of the woods we came out, turned the lights on and searched all over the woods for the shoe. We left the trail, remember? So I couldn't remember where we walked and where we didn't. 20 minutes later Michael comes huffing and puffing out of the woods with no luck of finding the shoe. By then it was too dark to see and we didn't have any flashlights. The last time we left the trail we lost out binoculars. Now I have one cute cowboy boot and one cute little boy with 2 feet.

See the cuteness of the boots?!

We did go back on Friday to try and find the shoe, but it had snowed and there was no finding it then. Guess we'll just go back in the spring and hope and pray it's there. I would just replace the shoes, but I can't find them anywhere and I bought them for a dollar at a yardsale. They cost 20 bucks easy from a shoe store. But at least we saw some animals!

Silver Lake