Bears! Oh My!

Day 5 post will be short and sweet.

Last night's fireworks all over town went booming into the air until 12:45am!!! I slept through from 8:30 until 12:25a when a big boom awoke me and kept me up until they stopped.  Melodie, on the other hand, didn't go to bed until late and the ended up going outside to capture the show before retiring.

6am had me wide awake and getting ready for my day. Melodie got up at 7:00.  We decided on a single 2.8 mile hike today to Aster Falls. We parked and got a couple shots of a Columbian Ground Squirrel.

As we reached the trailhead, a hiker had just come down with news that a brown and black bear were on the trail so they turned back. We ventured on but I wasn't too excited about the prospect. We hiked for a while with another group that was carrying bear spray but they left us in their dust. We turned back, at my urging, and ended up with yet another group going up again. A family with 4 children running ahead passed us and we gave them the warning of bears. About 1/4 mile further they had turned back since the father was concerned for his two youngest, under 8.

Clapping our hands and shouting "unicorn" as not to confuse each other if we really DID see a bear, Melodie talked me into continuing the hike reasoning that others had gone before us and surely chased the bears away thereby clearing the path for us.

 We passed some day-old bear scat and got to the meadow where the bear photos by the other hiker had been taken and our 2nd group was now a long way ahead with their bear spray. We should have bought some but it was $48! But how much are our lives worth? I put my scaredy cat foot down and told her I wasn't going any further on the trail.  I wanted to live to hike another day.

She couldn't believe my adventurous side wasn't taking us to the falls and reasoned that I flew a plane. I told her I'd rather be in a plane with engine failure than facing a bear. I've practice emergency landings before but haven't had practice in reasoning/facing down a bear. The bear was in control here and not me!

The beargrass plants, we learned, were used as baby powder by the natives since the powder is extremely fine and very soft. We went driving through the campground and found this patch of snow next to the parking space. Just couldn't resist playing in it.

Our drive back to East Glacier Park provided a beautiful stand of Quaking Aspen so we just had to stop and snap.

Stopped at the 101 year old Lodge with their gorgeous flowers and shopped in the gift store.

Took some photos of the town, returned to our room to blog and download for a couple hours before heading back to Luna's for our final dinner in this quaint town.

sun

I think we're going to have the Grizzly Bait: Alaskan salmon burger with avocado, pepper jack cheese, and lemon caper aioli served with sweet potato fries aaaand, of course, one more piece of their great huckleberry pie with ice cream. We didn't share dinner tonight.  The Grizzly Bait was just too delicious to share so we settled on pie to go for tomorrow's breakfast. Actually, we bought one sandwich to share and ended up buying a second to share. Zita left early today so our server was Electra Omega Puccini from Pittsburgh.  How's that for a handle? She was so kind to halve our meals first with both of our orders.

We're going to try for sunset pictures tonight with a 9:36p sunset. Electra gave us great directions to a nice sunset spot so we'll make the drive around 8:30p and see what we can see.

Tomorrow will be packing, laundry, petrol, and a couple grocery items in St. Mary on our way to Many Glacier.  Can't wait!  Many Glacier promises to give us loads of wildlife photos.