Bears! Oh My...

It is true, I saw my first bear in the wild today! After living in Alaska for 20 years, I never had the luck (or blessing) to see one. I guess this summer has been one to remember with an alarming number of bear attacks in Anchorage. Normally bears are not seen in town but this year, many have been making their presence known, and everyone is on high alert.

So we were not really "in town" at this point but in an army training area where my brother Matt was taking us to a secret cable/rope bridge that crossed a gorge. Luckily, he brought along his gun, so I felt a little safer.

On our way to the gorge, I thought I saw a fox up ahead and realized it was a bear cub. Now this is the first sign that danger is a real possibility (and sane people would go ahead and leave the area). If you see a cub, you will most likely see its mother close by and they are very protective of their babies. Matt, the now "crazy" brother in my opinion, told us to keep going and just make a lot of chatter. We passed the place we saw the cub without incident.

On our way back from the gorge, in the exact spot we saw the cub, I looked back to check on Ethan and cousin Josh and saw not the cub this time, but the mother bear (this means we actually walked right pass the blasted bear!). We quickly told the boys to catch up with us. Matt took out his shot gun as we stood still to see what the bear might do. You can see from the pictures, that the bear was actually rather close to us (and they can move fast). It crossed the street and then slowly started walking toward us...and then thankfully, walked back into the woods.

Now I need to find a moose...a bit safer.