A Visit to Northwest Trek

If you're a photographer in the Seattle area and you've never been to Northwest Trek, you're in for a treat. It's well worth the drive to darn near Mt. Rainier, even on a freezing cold April morning!

The animals in the park, by and large, are in open enclosures rather than cages. They also have a significant number of grazers in a huge park-like area that is navigated by hourly trams. The windows on the trams open--great for those long lenses--and the drivers routinely stop for nearby critters, which makes for some easy captures.

We went a few weeks ago with a group of Washington & Oregon photographers from POTN; in spite of the early morning wakeup call, we had about 10 people turn out. It was a blast!

The running joke was that we'd have a whole series of animal butts as much of what we saw at first couldn't be bothered to face us:





But finally we had some cooperative subjects.








The bison in particular were fascinating--on a 35 degree morning, every breath created a puff of smoke!



And we spent a good 45 minutes with the raccoons. They were INCREDIBLY active for midday, and most of us blew through CF cards very quickly.




Make the time to visit this park soon, it's well well worth it!