I turned 51 in October after crazy wild year of ups, downs and lots of just get it done days in-between.

Myself and two amazing women in my life, Cousin in laws all have our birthdays within two weeks of each other and we decided we needed some girls time.  Now I know that most ladies would hit a spa or go out to a fancy hotel and eat out or take in a pool side time

We however pooled together to rent a night spent at the Omaga park in a cabin on the hillside backed on to the younger wolf pack with two bears in the mix. We packed in all our own food, made amazing meals and did the whole park two days with multiple rounds, we feed out around 150 pounds of carrots lol

You can rent a single story or a two story, we went with the second floor because it gave me a outdoor Balcony to sit with my camera and my best long distance lens on and freeze for a couple hours as the dawn broke and came up over the tree lines.

As the wolves and bears are free to roam the area, it took a lot of waiting to get them to come in a spot that was a) in my zoom area and boy did I push that b) was in a clear enough spot that it was not blocked by trees or they were moving on the second or third ridge which I could see them go into and pop up and down on but could not get photos of them.

Almost at the end of the morning after a couple hours, these two magic moments of backlight of this wolf appeared, snap and then they were gone.. only to appear on the lope coming out of water that I didn’t even know was there behind that ridge. I got one single photo in the time it took him to come up, out and gone..

So so worth the numb fingers..

There were many highlights on the trip to be sure but for today, enjoy the photos of the Grey Wolves

Thankful for the hot coffee my darling friend brought me, I was just watching the whole area and saw the Cinnamon bear come up and behind to the water fall area, sadly I was not able to use the waterfall area for photography as my angle was wrong but it would be worth if I was going to do it again to try and pick which condo for certain spots that they clearly use a touch more then others.

Anyway, I looked over to movement on my right and saw the wolves in clear ambush mode, I have watched my sheep dogs enough to understand that lowered body, that slink, that eye and that they were working together, then came out so slow and quiet as they crossed the backside of the open area using the second ridge..

Looking to the left I could see that the bear was on to them and was alert and watching, suddenly he started to move off though the trees and I thought, I have one chance at this.. there is only one tree that I can get a clear pushed to the edge of my lens range of, if he goes up, I will be ready, if he used a different trees I will miss it.

Not only did I get him going up the tree but I caught this snap of the wolf who came around the other side and looked up at him

I will need to head back at some point over winter in deeper snow with just the wolves and a big old snow suit lol and see what I can get once again.