Recently, we had Mother’s Day here in America. My beloved children are now getting big enough that they can take the initiative to do things for me. Thirteen heard on the radio that Bear World was letting moms in free, so he decided we should go. Here he is with the bear, face blurred for privacy. My son is the blonde one and the bear is the dark-haired one.

“Yellowstone” Bear World, despite its name, is not at or in Yellowstone Park but actually closer to Rexburg, Idaho, where you can see the foothills of the Grand Tetons but not the Tetons themselves. The day we went was beautiful and sunny:

The way it works is that you first drive through an animal park, and then you access the parking lot and other attractions. You can drive back through the animal park as many times as you like on one ticket. But there is a very stern warning:

The first part of the park has various ungulates like this rare albino elk:

and this regular elk:

… and also bison.

Then you go through a gate where an employee checks your receipt and reiterates the instructions. Beyond the gate, you are in the bear part of bear world, where you can see multiple bears just hanging out. There are, at least in the black bear area, far more bears than you would normally see all in one place. The trees all have metal cuffs on them, I guess to prevent them from being destroyed by all those bears.

There are feeding troughs for the bears,

and shady places for them to sleep. Many of them were doing just that.

But before you get to where the black bears are, you pass an enclosure with a few grizzly bears. The grizzlies are behind an electric fence.

This is gal is pacing the perimeter.

Notice that she has the distinctive grizzly look: the concave or “dished” face, and the grizzly shoulder hump. They are also a lot larger than black bears.

I say “she.” We assumed all the bears in the park were females, because it’s hard to imagine you could keep one or more males in these conditions without them fighting each other.

Back to the black bear area. The black bears were free to roam across the road if they liked, even right in front of your car. Notice the black bear silhouette: straight muzzle, no hump, smaller. I love the curving feet!

At one point, we even saw some employees standing among the black bears! They were photographing a large tree whose trunk had been torn up. The bears seemed unconcerned.

And now we get to my favorite thing! You see, “black” bears (and actually grizzlies as well!) can be any color. (I am learning so much from Bear World!) They can be blond, for example. We did see one that was black-and-blond patches. But this here … is a cinnamon bear! It’s hard to tell from the picture, but its brown coat was almost ginger. The hair also looked thicker and more luscious than on some of the other bears, almost as if it had been groomed.

Also … and I bet you didn’t see this coming … Bear World also has DINOSAURS!

One of them went so far as to eat Mr. Mugrage.

Thirteen, meanwhile, snuck into a dino’s nest and hatched out of its egg:

I have seen better dinosaur parks, but I have never seen more bears.