Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My...

OK, so maybe not lions and tigers, but we sure had bears this last weekend.

My husband and I love canoeing. It's how we met and we continue to canoe more than 20 years later. We consider ourselves seasoned canoeists. We've been trying to remember if we've ever seen a bear canoeing and maybe possibly we've seen one. This weekend we saw four of them.

We have a jinx when it comes to canoeing the French River. We gave up on it a few years ago after a series of mishaps but decided to try it again this last weekend.

The jinx persists.

Our second night we were almost asleep in our less than ideal island campsite when I heard what sounded like baby bears complaining. We look out of our tent, and sure enough, in the not too far away water, there are two bear cubs swimming. Their whining stopped shortly after they turned the corner to our island. To us, that meant that they were on our island. They were, along with Momma Bear. Long story short, we decided to leave the campsite to the bears.

A day later at one of the portages we saw this bear. He wasn't afraid of us at all, which makes us afraid of him. It's not the greatest photo (the bear is the brown lump next to the tree trunk), but it's proof that we saw him.

Turns out it's a poor berry crop this year and the bears are becoming less fearful as they forage.

I'm pretty sure we've caused another couple to divorce. On our way out of the park we met up with other canoeists coming into the park. We told them about the bear at the portage since they were going that way. The last thing we overheard was the wife saying to the husband "You forgot to tell me until this morning that there are rattlesnakes in the park and now I'm hearing about bears????".

If you'd like to read more about our weekend adventure (which includes photos of the French River and why we keep trying to go back), check out my husband's blog at http://canoemoose.blogspot.com/.

Cheers,

Sandy