Weekend Adventure

My husband and I headed out for a weekend of camping and fishing in WY. On the way we spotted this moose.
And beside her was her baby. Continuing on our trip we had three badgers cross the road in front of us. Unfortunately I didn't get my camera out in time for a photo. We found our campground near Encampment, WY and about the time we arrived it started to rain. We had a bite of lunch to wait out the rain before setting up our tents. It was a brief mountain shower and we were able to get our tents set up. We were trying out our new backpacking tent, but brought along our bigger one just in case we needed a place to get out of the rain. Our camp table and chairs fit into the bigger one along with our cooking supplies. It was a good thing we did have the bigger one because after we finished putting up our tents, it started raining AGAIN. We had a game of cribbage waiting for the rain to stop. Once it did we headed out to hit the Encampment River for some fishing before it got dark. On the way we saw 4 bucks and the lead one had a huge rack. Later a doe and two fawns were spotted along the road. My husband joked that after all the game we had seen we only had mountain sheep, elk, bear and mountain lion to spot to round out our viewing collection.

We got back to camp, ate dinner and got ready for bed. I took out my contacts and without putting on my glasses headed down to the outhouse. Across the road from our campsite was a couple from Georgia. When I was walking back to the tent I heard "Mr. Georgia" bellowing in a loud, deep voice, "Git, git outta here! Git, go on!" He kept hollering and I was thinking, boy the chipmunks must be getting into his stuff and really annoying him. I couldn't see anything since I didn't have my glasses on and it was dark. As I got closer to our site, "Mrs. Georgia" popped out and shouted, "There's a bear and he's a big un!"

WHOA! I moved at a quick trot and grabbed my husband. We stood watching...although I still couldn't see a thing. My husband exclaimed, "Wow, he's a big bear!"

"Where?"

"Right there!" But I couldn't make him out. Probably for the best not to see how big he really was."

Well Mr. Georgia managed to get the bear shooed off and he came over to our site. He had two hunting knives on cords around his neck and a pistol in a shoulder harness along with a flashlight that looked like a weapon. "I don't want to alarm you, but that bear was big...bout 300 lbs. and he isn't scared of people. He reared up when I was trying to get him out of our camp. "

His parting words were, "If he comes around and you need help, give a shout!"

How comforting!
I took a look at our tent and then looked at my husband and then looked at the truck. I said, "We're sleeping in the truck tonight!"

It was a long night, very little sleep and most uncomfortable. The next day I decided we were sleeping in the tent, bear or no bear.

The forest service ranger popped into the campground before we were leaving to go fishing Saturday morning and said that he had set a trap, because the bear was roaming around a ranch house and now the campground and wasn't showing any fear. When we got back to camp that night the ranger came around again and said that he hadn't caught the bear and told us again to make sure and put all food away and put the clothes we cooked in away. We put everything in the truck and after two wine coolers I decided that I wouldn't worry about the bear. We went to bed in the tent armed with the bear spray, an axe and a camping knife.

The next morning my husband told me that the other couple tent camping in the campground had heard the bear sniffing around their tent Friday night, but he decided not to tell me. He thought I would have another night of no sleep knowing that. He was right and I was glad he didn't tell me!The bear didn't come to any of the three us Saturday night. It probably was because he didn't get any food on Friday night, so we did just what we were suppose to. We all kept clean camps and didn't tempt the bear with leaving any food laying around.

Oh and just to round out our sighting of animals...we saw 5 mountain sheep on the way home. I'm really ok with not seeing a mountain lion!! Mom