Day 14 ~ Wherein a bear proves you can't outrun it

Two weeks. In two weeks we have travelled all the way across the country, down the coast of California, and are starting our trip back tomorrow morning.

Today was pretty darn great. We saw five bears yesterday, and I saw two on the drive to our morning hike. We headed down to walk the congress trail, several groups of trees named the house and senate with one named the president. We also saw the largest living thing on the planet, the general Sherman. It's flipping huge. No joke.

But you've already heard about big trees. The top story today was while we were walking the congress trail, and it involves bear number three.

This doesn't need that much setup, only that we were walking on a trail looking at trees just kinda hanging out. I heard a noise that was far enough off the path and loud enough that I immediately thought bear. Sure enough I look over and maybe 25 yards away I see a black bears head pop up for a second, and then drop back down. It looked kind of odd until I realized that the sounds were continuing and growing louder, and then I saw the bear literally vault over a fallen tree probably five or six feet in diameter on a straight line path towards my face. Luckily it saw us and turned slightly so instead or running us over, which it would have (or eaten us), it merely ran across the path in front of us by about twenty feet. This is the part of the show where I actually start observing things again. Up to that point I was in full survival mode, ready to yell or fight, in retrospect probably not a good idea, but frozen until the bear decided where it was really going.

It was then I realized exactly how fast it was moving. There is no possible way on earth I or anyone of us could have gotten away from that creature had it decided it wanted to play with us. If I had a ten second head start on it and I was running for my life I have little doubt I would be very unhappy about twenty seconds in. Now most of you know me and know that I have a slightly different view of risk and the probability of me living through something than most people, but I will fully admit that there is no way I could have made it out of there if that bear wasn't running from ANOTHER BEAR. Apparently a large brown bear was chasing this little (and by little I mean like holy crap big) black bear into our path. We survived and heard no screams thereafter so I assume no one was injured. Ridiculous.

The third coolest thing happened next, when we decided to come back to the campsite early and just hang out. I found a nice log in the middle of a brilliant green marsh where I sat in the sun and read my book until the sun started to set.

Here the other contender for first coolest part comes into play. I hear random music from the other side of the marsh and I follow my log bridge in it's direction and I end up in an ampitheater. Long story short there's a ranger there who tells the life of John Muir, one of the people who spearheaded the nationalizing of the parks myself and Alex have been perusing. The cool thing about was he did it in first person in a decent Scottish accent. The story was funny and interesting and I don't remember the last time I heard a tale told verbally like that. It made me smile and was a great end to the day.

Tomorrow we start our trek back with a weekend in Vegas. Wish us luck and pray for our souls :)