No, not an insult (used in Game of Thrones, once or twice) … this guy was nice enough to stand still while looking at me. There was a fence between us … but he was still hoping that I would share a treat.
I obeyed the sign and didn’t offer anything.
This was taken at one of the small farms along the Larry Scott Trail south of Port Townsend, WA.
One of the challenges of camping/backpacking in the Olympic National Park is keeping food away from mice, jays and ground squirrels or chipmunks. While the park requires bear-proof containers or elaborate hanging rituals to keep food away from the black bears, the same containers also protect your food from the smaller critters like the Townsend’s Chipmunk shown here. (in some areas raccoons and crows are even bigger pests)
These two photos were from the same hike, the same day. Below shows hiking the Hayden Pass Trail (in Olympic National Park) … and you can see a momma bear and cub crossing the hillside just below the large rock outcrop. On the other side of the pass we had an Olympic Marmot on the trail … and we were very glad it was a marmot and not a momma bear and cub. (neither bear nor marmot attacked)
These photos are from a long ago hike. One of the toughest days I have had backpacking … the “off trail” traverse from Appleton Pass to Cat Basin in the Olympic National Park. As we struggled across the side hill, the clouds came in and our visibility dropped. While we were on the sidehill, there was no real chance of losing our way, since we could just keep the uphill side to our right, until we ran into the Cat Basin Trail that comes in from the High Divide. We were tired and set up camp in a small flat spot above the trail. We were sorta miserable and thought the spot was one of the worse we had camped in. But in the morning, the cloud was gone and we were looking directly down into Cat Basin and a herd of a hundred or so Olympic Elk. It went from one of the worse camps we had to one of the best … in a few hours.
This young buck was not shy, because it has lived its life in the National Park, where there isn’t any hunting allowed … so humans aren’t recognized as ‘the enemy’.