Saturday, May 31, 2008

BEAR ALERT!

Ha ha, made you look.

We did go for our first camping trip of the season and we did see a bear, but not on the actual trip. It was on the road on our way home. I saw it running along and thought it was a large dog at first, because people always let their dogs run loose in rural Alaska. But nope, it was a rather small black bear. He ran across the road and into the bushes, where we couldn't see him any more. At least, I think we couldn't see him, because SOMEbody was driving by at 30 mph, not excited at all about the bear. Anyway, to see him cross was kind of cool.

The trip itself was uneventful. We did the Gull Rock hike, which is 5 easy miles one way to a cool rock right out on the water. It was pretty windy, and I was a little nervous because there's lots of dead trees out there, thanks to the spruce beetle. But no trees fell on us, so that was good.

We did run into a moose on the trail. Not literally, but we came around a corner, and there he was, a little startled. We waved our arms and told him to leave, thereby proving the theory that meese do not respond to that tactic, the way bears do. So we started back up the trail, and he started following us! I was not too thrilled by that -- I didn't know if people had been feeding him or what. But we finally found a place off the trail that wasn't covered in Devil's Club, and stepped off. He trotted on by, happy to be passing us. In retrospect, this is what happened:

Us: Holy crap! A moose!
Moose: Holy crap! Humans!
Us: Go away! We want to hike there!
Moose: No! I was here first, and anyway I live here.
Us: Crap. It's not working. Let's back up.
Moose: Damn straight, fools.
Us: Hey, he's walking right by!
Moose: I told you this was my trail. Do you think I'm going to wander around through Devil's Club when there's this nice path here? And they say humans are smart.

Overall, it was a nice first camping trip of the season.

2 comments:

Alpha Monkey said...

Oh, that sounds like a cool experience! You saw my nick-namesake.

L said...

Well, he wasn't as attractive. :)