Does a Bear really poo in the woods?

Yes, they do! We drove to the town of Orr where there is the Vincent Shute Wildlife Preserve. Vincent Shute was a man who started a logging company in the town of Orr in the 40′s and was having a problem with Black Bears breaking into this house to look for food. He shot many black bears. One day he caught another one in his house and shot it. He went into town and said “We won’t have any more problems with the black bears because I just shot the last one in MN.” Well, he spoke too soon because when he went back home he found 3 more bears in his house. This is when he realized he needed to learn how to live with then and started feeding them.

When he realized he was not going to be around forever and didn’t want people to kill them they started this wild life sanctuary for the bears. Park is open from 5p – 8p and you get pretty close to the bears when they eat. There were many babies that were born in Jan/Feb (Bears have babies every 1.5 years). Our favorite was Oscar, a huge bear!

Andrew loved being that close to the bears and one actually climbed the stairs to come and say hi to him. There are 80 named bears on the preserve.

Who would have thought high iron content could turn these falls orange? The flow of water reminded us of rootbeer so we thus created a new desert – Big Falls Floats – Root Beer and Vanilla Ice Cream – NaNa bought some root beer in the town of Big Falls too.