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Friday, July 30, 2010

Yikes I Was There and There Was a Bear

Well today, being bored at work, I went to CNN's website, one of the few the neonazis haven't blocked and read about those poor people who were mauled by that bear.  Last summer I had a close encounter with a bear, not five miles from that campground.

Tommy and I had cruised the campground, thought it looked great, and decided to go fishing first and then come back and get a site.  We found a place to park and hiked in to the river.  When I say river, I'm talking about something maybe 30 feet across.  Tommy was having his usual wonderful luck and I was having my usual hideous luck.  This one fish would come up grab the fly and spit it out. You could almost hear him going, Phytht, Yuck, Gross, Bleach." I was tying on what felt like my fiftieth fly when I just happened to look up. Right across the stream, river, whatever was a black bear and he was looking at me. 

Now I would love to tell you, it was a monster bear, huge and growling, but it wasn't . It was a small bear maybe two years old or so, and he was studying me, almost as if he were thinking, "Now what did mother tell me about those creatures? Do I eat them or run away?

"Bear," I shrieked. Bear, Tommy there's a bear. Tommy who was busy revelling in his wonderful luck did not pay attention until I I finally said ,"Expletive deleted, Tommy look up there's a bear.  By now I was hyperventilating and getting ready to take off.  Mr. Calm gets out his bear spray and starts packing up his gear.  Meanwhile, the bear is paying strict attention to us and following us on his side as we start to move away.  He followed us for maybe 100 yards until we came to a small stream that we had to cross to get to the car. He then sat down and watched as we crossed the stream and headed out of sight.

I told Tommy, in no uncertain terms, if he wanted to camp in this bear infested area, he could; but I was spending the night in Cooke City. We stayed in Cooke City

3 comments:

  1. I am with you! At the Search and Rescue training I went to with the Hubby, there were bears everywhere. I only rode twice and made sure that Annie was the fastest horse both times.

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  2. Holy cow! You were partially stalked by a bear. I'm so glad it didn't charge you and wrestle Tommy for his fishy loot. Seriously, that's scary.

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  3. I'm a really good shot and Tommy asked me later if I'd had a gun would I have shot the bear and I said, "No, as long as he was on his side of the river, I wouldn't have done it. The nano second he crossed the river he would have been toast. The whole experience left me scared to death and unwilling to camp in bear territory, From now on we're renting an RV.

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