The Bear Story

Also by popular demand (you people are demented!! why can't you ask about how beautiful the Grand Canyon hike was?), this is the Bear Story. So I'm out having the time of my life travelling, and I'm thinking I should share this. I want to share this experience. So I (repeatedly) call my friend Bassel suggesting (militantly) that he should join me for a week. And finally he agrees. I picked him up from the Denver airport and we proceeded directly for Rocky Mountain National Park. By the time we got there, it was getting late, and a storm was brewing, so we opted to camp out in the national forest for the night. (By the way, to anyone looking to travel through the US, camping in the forest is 100% FREE as long as you primitive camp. I spent many nights this way, camping in the middle of nowhere - I highly recommend it!) As evening fell, the skies cleared. Bassel and I cooked up some grub, set up camp, etc. I left the windows cracked (mistake #1) to air out the car a little through the night. Unbeknownst to me, Bassel had a couple peanut butter and honey sandwhiches in his laptop bag in the car (mistake #2). The combination of these mistakes made for... made for... the next paragraph!

We went to bed after pitching the tent 50-75 feet away from the car. At some point in the night I awoke to a flash of light, a car horn honk, and the sound of breaking glass. What I heard was one blip of the car alarm going off as a bear broke into the passenger side of the car. Why the alarm didn't keep going I don't know (mistake #3, Subaru's car alarm blows). I realized what was likely going on, and also realized the damage was done. Getting out of the tent to what, fend off the bear? Not a bright idea. We had no food in the tent, he wasn't going to bother us. I did make some noise, I flashed my headlamp at him (never saw him, LED headlamps don't have much of a range) and loudly played my harmonica some. For all I know this just made the bear tap his toes while he munched down Bassel's sandwhiches. =)

In the morning Bassel was the first one up. He came back with the bad news. All in all we were pretty lucky, all the bear took was the sandwhiches. He damaged some stuff in the car, but nothing severely. The smashed window was the only headache, which meant we couldn't lock the car and go on hikes. This having happened on a weekend (no repair shops were open) meant we'd lose a day. So we decided to drive to southwest Utah, which was part of the plan anyway, making it a driving day and losing no time at all. It all worked out in the end, as it always does I suppose. My commendations to the body shop in Utah, they patched things up well enough that we could lock the car. A month later I stopped in Boulder, CO to get the real work done. That body shop did a bad job, the windows don't close or seal right, but at this point it's a heck of a drive to get them to fix it. What matters is that the bear was well fed, that I'll never leave the windows cracked, and that Bassel will never leave PB&H sandwhiches in the car!!

Never trust these guys to camp out anywhere near bears!

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