Lions and Tigers and Bears...oh my!

Saturday, Kim and I decided we were going to pack a lunch and drive up the canyon for a hike. Deron called and said that we should change our plans and come up to the little "hide-away" where they had camped. He said they had gone on a hike earlier that morning and had found an amazing trail that would take us clear back into the mountains, through the brush, the pines and even a small creek. WOW...it sounded fun, so we finished packing our lunch and headed up to pay them a visit....thinking that we would ALL go, but when we got there, nobody wanted to venture up the trail again. After a little debate, Cameron decided that he wanted to come- so off we went. It was a gorgeous path. Lots of pine tree's, squirrels, birds and even a little rain. We ate our lunch along the trail, took lots of pictures and even sang some goofy songs that I used to sing with the kids when they were little. Kim kept saying that we had been on the trail long enough and was ready to go back...I wanted to hike for at least an hour and THEN turn around. We were at the "5 more minutes" mark, when we stopped to rest and I told them, "Just 5 more minutes, and then we'll turn around". We were looking around at the way the path was going. It was heading up into some pretty thick bushes and narrowing...not that it bothered any of us, but just observing. Cameron was the first to see the markings on the tree's right by us...YES a bear had left its mark in several tree's right there next to us and YES they were fresh! At first we thought maybe we were just freaking ourselves out...but NO, we looked closer and could see that they defiantly were bear markings. Earlier (not too far back on the trail), we had passed some "FRESH DUNG" on the trail...I thought it looked like bear poop then, but I didn't want to say anything to the kids or scare them so we just said "Hmmm...animal poop" and kept walking. NOW we were scared...at least a tad bit nervous to say the least. I've always wanted to see a bear in the wild...but I wanted to be DRIVING when I did...and we WEREN"T driving!...We had walked 55 minutes up the trail and decided that we had gone far enough...(and we were a bit scared)...so we turned around and headed back. We were making as much noise as possible and still trying to hurry without running...but somewhere along the way, I think we must have ran because we made it back to camp in 15 minutes....We were all happy to be back safe and sound and glad that the bear kept to himself, where ever he was.