9-8-10 Day 7 - A Bear In Our Backyard

Yep – remember the kids playing in the sand and fishing yesterday??? Well, that’s EXACTLY where a huge grizzly bear wandered today – makes me SOOOOOOOOO thankful that he did his wandering in our backyard today and not yesterday, when ALL NINE of our children were right there in his path. We praise God for his protection. And Levi is not tempted at all to go fishing after dusk anymore – we kind of had our eyes opened today. But that whole fascinating story happened later – after we arrived home from our touring today; we had a whole fun day before that even happened. But now EVERYONE is satisfied that we really saw a live grizzly bear in the wild, and just as close as we wanted – no park rangers to move us away.  Yep, we sure did – and a little too close for this mother’s liking; but all’s well that ends well, and I’m  just trying not to think about all the what ifs that DIDN’T happen and  focus my thoughts on God’s omnipotence and all-knowing presence. He is so great and merciful, and we are so undeserving of His gifts.

Morning routine (even on vacations we do better with routine) and headed to see some beautiful waterfalls. First was Upper Tower Falls, which was road level and easy to get to.

 

THEN a big hike, if you can call it that when it was mostly steel steps, down to the Lower Tower Falls.

And we were off…

Partway down view.

Rainbow in the spray – beautiful.

All the way down.

We enjoyed the sight and sound awhile, and then…….then, the hike back up.  Oh my, it was harder than I thought it would be.

But we made it, although the exertion left me with a throbbing headache, and Dad and Jacob both had a touch of asthma afterwards.  Thankfully my headache didn’t exacerbate but disappeared after some Tylenol, and the asthma responded to medicine also.  Next was lunch in the van while we drove to the Cascade Lake trailhead.

This was a meandering hike on mostly level ground, through meadows and pine forests both, to another lake tucked 2.2 miles back in the middle of the boondocks. Trouble was, we were just ready to start walking and it poured down rain! So we waited in the van another 10 minutes before the sun came out and we started off.  Hot, cold, rain. Hot, rain, cold. Rain, cold. Rain. THANKFULLY it never poured down rain but only drizzled, but we all unanimously agreed that warm sunshine makes a hike much more enjoyable.

We started out with blue skies and beautiful scenery, just rejoicing that we hadn’t given up on the hike when it started to rain.

We crossed numerous small streams (could’ve been the same one, I guess) on quaint little bridges like this one…

…and this one…

…and this one.

Another buffalo without the safety of the van!

Taking a rest.

Then the rain returned, and Jacob found this beautiful sheltered spot in which to keep dry.

Spirits were pretty low here, and the discussion was whether to turn back or go on and see the lake…

We went on, but some of us (won’t say names) lost our smiles for awhile.

 

Waaaay back in the distance, you can see some who waited out the next shower in the trees, while some of us jogged/walked on to the lake, which was so very close.

And…this is as close as we got.

We could see as we got closer that it just wasn’t a Trout Lake; and especially with all the dead trees surrounding it, the lack of sunshine and warmth, and the distant rumble of thunder, I snapped a picture and we turned around.

Meeting up and heading back…my turn to carry Joshua. I’ll be the first to admit I could never carry him on a steep incline or decline, but on this relatively flat trail, it was ok, and we had fun.  I’ll do a lot of goofy things just to hear his little giggle, and considering he hadn’t yet had a nap and it was going on late afternoon, he did great.

This picture of Jesse makes me laugh so; I’ll blow it up for a better chuckle. Really, he is a very happy young man most of the time!

Okay, so maybe the hike was a little long – even Kate, our never-out-of-energy girl, needed a rest (Jacob got up before I snapped this picture).

Smile is back!

How can you not smile with such a precious little brother to adore you?

Jacob’s turn.

Almost home – on the bumpy bumpy bumpy dirt road to our cabin, this pronghorn crossed right in front of us. We have been seeing them all over the park, but never this close.

And then, not 100 yards from our road, Kate saw a buffalo by the road. “No, wait, it’s not a buffalo…it’s a bear!” This photo was not zoomed in…

…but this one was, and it very clearly was a bear, heading straight for Reis Creek, which is down in the trees off to the right of the picture. He took off as soon as he saw us, not at all eager to be seen.

It seemed apparent to us that he was heading for the river, where Levi was planning to fish, so Levi continued with his plan and took the camera with him (Ummm??? Was that wise???). Well, it was ok because Dad and the other 8 kids were right behind him (I stayed back to start supper); they didn’t go down the riverbank because they saw the bear up ON the riverbank, not 50 yards from where they were standing. He tried to cross a fence between him and them, but couldn’t (they saw him rear up as if to climb over), so stayed on his side of the fence and continued on to the river. About that time, I went out the front door of the cabin, just to see if he would happen to be there, and there he was. Thinking Dad and the kids were down by the river, I tried calling Dad on his phone, but since he was on the phone to Levi, Dad didn’t answer. Levi wasn’t sure what to do, because obviously the bear could have been between him and us. We could see the bear was a ways from him, and told him to get back to the top of the riverbank; after telling the closest fisherman there was a grizzly heading their way, he made a beeline for us – and finally we could take a picture, just as it indeed emerged from the underbrush onto the river. Meanwhile, I had told the neighbors there was a bear, and everyone (including us) was pretty wild excited. As we watched his progress, and that of the hapless fishermen who were in his path, we chatted with the neighbors and talked bear. The whole ordeal was pretty exciting for this redneck family, that’s for sure. This picture was not telephotoed; the stairs at the bottom are how we got down to the river, just back of our cabin.

I used telephoto on this picture…

…and this one.

He’s on an island in the middle of the river…

…and on the very left are two fishermen trying to figure out where to go since this bear was coming straight towards them.

He’s crossing at the end of the island, right to where the fishermen were standing in the last picture. We’re not sure where they were in this picture, but we think they were right at the edge of the water, further to the left, which would’ve been about 30 feet from him (which is what they told us when they came to the top of the bank).

He ambled on his way, and the fishermen headed up the bank to us, pretty quickly I might add. I didn’t get the photo of the raft from a white-water rafting company which floated by right then; the men on the raft confirmed to the fishermen that the bear was a grizzly as opposed to a black bear, which we had been debating because we really didn’t know the difference.

Our vantage. Our cabin is a couple more down from the ones in the picture, closer to me. The 5 fisherman came up the bank right here, and we talked bear for a few minutes with them before they disappeared to their cabins. They were done fishing for now, imagine that!

Bear then ambled back up the bank further downstream, and played in the water from an irrigator before he finally disappeared from our sight.

 

While we were watching him in the field, we were talking to a lady who lives there year-round. She told us that this bear has been coming around a lot lately; he’s learned that people leave food out. There are warnings and cautions all over the place here about not leaving food out, and there is no grill because the smell attracts bears, and don’t leave trash uncovered, blah blah; we thought they were being a little overreactive. In reality, for those who live full-time along the river, it’s a big deal. If bears don’t fear people, they can become a nuisance and eventually have to be shot. Since this area is outside of the national park, the park rangers have no jurisdiction, interest, or authority and won’t do anything about a bear sighting even if they would know about it, which they usually don’t because no one reports it. This lady also said that last year there were bears everywhere; every day they would see them, because some nearby wild apple trees were loaded with apples.This year those same trees had no apples, so they don’t see as many bears, but she has had a black bear open her car door three different times and root around looking for trash (some of us, no names given, are kind of skeptical about that, but I don’t know why she would make it up (?)).  One more thing she said was that last year when hunting season opened, a hunter shot an elk right across the road from here, on land which is adjacent to the national park but not in it. Before they had it gutted and skinned or whatever you do when you hunt, a grizzly was headed his way. Someone had to call him and tell him to hurry up and get out of there; a grizzly is coming for that elk. The hunter took whatever it was hunters take, and left whatever it is that hunters leave (obviously we don’t hunt in this family), and the bear claimed what the hunter left. He just sat on that carcass (or whatever it was) for a few days until he ate it all gone, and the road always had 50 or 60 cars on it, with people watching and taking  pictures. For that incident, park rangers were present even though it was out of park jurisdiction, which was a wise move, I thought.

Levi talked to someone who said the bear was eating apples about a mile down the road, so we loaded up in the van to watch – but he was way across a field and we couldn’t see him very well, much less get a good picture.  We did see him stand on his hind legs and reach up to grab a tree branch – and he pulled the whole (big!) branch off the tree! Here he’s moving from one apple tree to another.

Anyway, enough rambling about the bear. NOW we can go home satisfied that we’ve seen all that Yellowstone has to see…ironically, although we’ve been scouring the park for bears every day, here we come home earlier than usual and find one literally in our backyard! How amazing is that?!

Oh – and the children will NOT be going down to the river alone again. Thankfully our lesson was learned with no harm done.

Enjoying the back patio.

Supper prep, supper, baths, dug a few (4!) splinters out of Joshua’s feet (with lots of helpers, he didn’t even cry)(lesson learned – duh – no bare feet on wooden boardwalks), Bibletime, showers, beds for littles, bigs watched a couple dvds, Dad checked work emails, I blogged, then beds.

This last set of photos could have happened at home, but it didn’t; it happened here. And these pictures are nothing new – I know we have MANY pictures of Joshua and watermelon, but these are just plain TOO CUTE not to post – Kate took some, and I took some. I can’t help but laugh when I look at them.  This little man is SERIOUS about his watermelon!

And that’s it.

(Yes, we brought the watermelon from home!)