The wonderful winter weather we’ve been having is all gone. First it was windy so that the trees lost their snow decoration. Then it became warm and rainy and the landscape is just plain awful now. Another long weekend and absolutely no prospects for any meaningful photography. Disaster. I think I will sit at the bird feeder for two days now.

But in order to avoid getting totally bored out of my head, we drove to Orsa Björnpark today. Not the best circumstances, obviously, but even if everything else fails I would at least get to do a small road trip. Which beats sitting at home and going out of my mind.

Turned out to be an interesting visit, but not the way I would’ve hoped for. For starters, it was nightmarishly slippery. Anyone who’s been to the Björnpark knows that the walkways can be really steep, so why they didn’t sand them before opening time is just beyond me (they were sanding when we walked out!). Imagine walking them on wet ice… well you can’t really call it walking. Nevermind my bones, but I had to keep the camera safe!

The second problem was that it was dark. Foggy day in the middle of the winter, you get the picture. Or not. Because it’s too dark to take any pictures.

And finally, the animals were apparently just as bored as I had been, if I had stayed at home. No polar bear activity (not counting the stress behaviour of one poor thing, you don’t often see that in Björnpark), the snow leopards were mostly just lying down and not in any such place where I could’ve gotten any pictures. The tigers were walking around but always following the fence, which means that it was really cool to be so close to the magnificent animals but totally impossible to take any pictures of them.

After going through the record few pictures I took, I’m left with two frames which don’t totally suck.

But you know what? Despite this almost disaster of a visit, I still think it was a great trip! Happy to have done it, and better luck with the animals the next time.