The Bear

So I understand that bears live in the mountains, and yes I know that we were camping in the mountains, but I am from Calgary where when we go into Kananaskis, Canmore and Banff, they have signs about bears everywhere. They also have bear proof garbage bins EVERYWHERE. I guess since there were NO signs (and I mean none – I looked for them afterward) and there were no bear proof garbages – I did not even think about bears.

I think this might have been Adam’s line of thinking as well….

Sunday evening (night 2) I go to bed at 12:00 am – Adam follows at 12:40 – ten minutes later 12:50 – he hears someone making a lot of noise in the pop cans that are in the back of the campground truck right by our trailer. Adam is a very light sleeper so he gets upset and decided to go and tell this very inconsiderate person to stop making so much noise rustling around in the pop cans and garbage.

Adam gets out of bed –

Adam - “I am going to kick the S**T out of that guy.”

Jenny – “Be nice.”

Adam throws a shirt on (only underwear no pants) and goes outside. Less than 45 seconds later he comes back into the trailer….

Adam – “Okay, I am not going to kick the S**T out of that guy, because that guys is a BIG F**KING BEAR.”

Jenny – Laughing – I could not help myself – it was pretty funny.

So what happened was a bear came into the campground because he smelt the garbage in the truck, I am guessing the noise Adam made startled him and he decided to abandon his snack – Adam figures he was about 25 feet from the bear – but it was off the truck and starting to walk away towards the trees.

Well – the bear did not come back that night but it did for the next two nights Sheldon (campground owner) started collecting all the garbage in the evening and taking it to the dump each day. Night 2 of the bear – back at the truck looking for more garbage, night 3 – tenters at the campground were cooking smokies over their campfire at approx 8:30 and they spotted the bear about 10-15 feet away watching them – thankfully they had an air horn handy and were able to scare him away. After that we did not see the bear again – but we also never cooked smokies after dark….

Adam said it was a big bear - this was confirmed by others at different sightings - I still say any bear looks big when you are in your underware!

For those of you that are curious - it was a black bear.



This is a picture of the truck and our trailer - yup - that close. The bed at the back is Jackie's