Colorado Photo Dump

I've added some photos from various cell phones and other people's cameras from the day we went to Mission: Wolf, which is about 20 miles away from my parents' house. It's a short distance but it's up in the mountains and you travel down windy dirt roads to get there so it takes about an hour. They rescue wolves who have either come from private owners that have unsuccessfully tried to raise them or zoos that have bred beyond their capacity. They do a lot of education all over the country about wolves, how they benefit the ecosystems they live in, and why they shouldn't be raised by humans. They have a small staff that live on the land and do their own farming, etc. There are 37 wolves and a handful of them are ambassador wolves, which means that they travel to local places for educational outreach, as well as an east coast tour and west coast tour. When my family came to Westcliffe back in 2001 we visited Mission:Wolf so I vaguely remembered the setup. But on this trip we got to do a wolf "encounter" that allowed Eliot, Rachel, and me to go into an enclosure with three of the ambassador wolves. Needless to say, it was pretty cool! Rachel and I confided afterwards that the whole point may have been lost on us because we were so enamored by the wolves that we sort of wanted one at home :) 

Ty didn't do the wolf encounter and slept through the entire tour.

When I was pregnant I said that as soon as Ty was born I was going to look at his ears and see if he got Eliot's signature  "flap." I looked on the day he was born and there was no flap. However, he has grown into having some flap! Luckily he wears them well and the flappy ears are cute on him :)

With Auntie before the tour.

Two sleepy guys

This is while we took turns using the bathroom. The whole setup is highly "sustainable" with little carbon footprint, so when we used the bathroom we were all surprised to see that you weren't allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet, but instead had to throw it in a trash can! So the bathroom didn't smell so hot, but apparently when you build your own bathroom in a remote part of the mountains, you do what you gotta do. 

Meeting a wolf named Abraham! Before you go in the enclosure they brief you on wolf manners. One of the things you do when the wolf approaches you is let them sniff your teeth, which, the guide informed us, is how they tell "where you've been." Abraham could smell that I had most recently been with almonds and he wasn't too impressed so our relationship was off to a good start!

Not the best picture but shows how close we were!