Ely got a little taste of Hollywood when actress Amber Tamblyn ("Joan of Arcadia," "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") stopped by the International Wolf Center to visit two new wolf pups. Turns out the visit was more than just a PR move, Tamblyn, 25, has been a member of the center for 14 years.

"I think every little kid has the animals they become obsessed with and they fall in love with and mine was the wolf," Tamblyn said on Monday morning. "When they were shooting wolves by aircraft in Alaska I wrote into the Alaskan officials — senators and congressman — and got a bunch of signatures together to help stop the shooting of wolves when I was pretty young. I was that little girl who had the wolf shirt, the wolf poster on her wall, wolf calendar, a collection of wolf porcelain action figures. I had it all. I was really obsessed."

The actress said she was "excited" for her first visit to the center and getting a chance to interact with the pups, which were born in late April at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake and then relocated to Ely. Tamblyn is an honorary judge of the center's joint name-the-pups contest (you can vote here: kare11.com/news/specials/wolfpups/default.aspx). But she already favors the nickname one of the pups has been given.

"It's Red Paw," said Tamblyn, who was joined on the trip by her dad, actor Russ Tamblyn ("West Side Story," "Twin Peaks"). "They're both male pups and they call one of them Red Paw because they look exactly the same so they had to put a little bit of red nail polish on one of his toes so they could figure out which one was which."

As for her two-day stint in Ely, Tamblyn "loved it."

"There's an incredible restaurant there called the Chocolate Moose — we ate at it twice, it's so good. We had a hotel down by the lake. It's so beautiful there ... the North Country, is absolutely gorgeous. There's no way to really describe it."