Camping Bear came to visit

We had been out all day sight seeing and running all over. When we got back to camp, we made dinner, a big pot of spaghetti with seasonings and a large amount of garlic. We cooked the sauce over our campfire in a Dutch oven, letting it simmer for a while. The smell of it was strong and I am sure no one missed it with in 200 yards of our camp. This could very well be the best spaghetti we have ever made.

Anyway, we ate our dinner and cleaned up the dishes. Then I put all the food in the bear box and the dishes on top of it. Then covered it with a tarp to keep the tree sap and dust off. The ice chest was put in the back of the car and covered it with a blanket, ruffling it up a little. The reason you need to do this is the bears know what an ice chest is and what is inside. Ruffling up the blanket makes it look as if you are not trying to hide anything, which is something bears have been know to detect. I then, without thinking, put the pot of spaghetti inside the car and made sure that the windows were shut tight.

After everything was finished. We decided to sit down and play some Yahtzee by the lantern lit night. We played a couple of full card games. That takes a while considering each card has six games on them, we play them consecutively. After a few rounds, we noticed the kids were getting tired. So we made them go to bed. At the time, we only had the two kids and one small tent. The tent was just big enough for all four of our sleeping bags and room for our cloth bags at our feet.

With the kids in bed, all was quiet. We sat down and played another round of Yahtzee. The day had pretty much took its toll on us too! Therefore, after the game we decided to hit the bags too.

We laid down, got comfortable, and were just starting to fall off to sleep. When all of a sudden it sounded as if someone was lifting up our tarp. The bear box was only about 2-3 feet away from our tent. Our first thought was, "A BEAR!" I jumped to my feet and unzipped the tent door and just started to poke my head out to get a look at the bear. When from behind, I was being pulled back by me shirt. My wife holding the end of my shirt told me I was not going out there. I told her I was just going to look out to see it. Just then, we heard a big crash and a grind. We could hear people two camps down from us talking and flash lights waving every where.

I grabbed my flashlight and went out to lite the lantern. Then it hit me. That was a stupid thing to do, putting that spaghetti in the car. I took the lantern over by the car to check it out. Luckily, it was still in tacked. In the lantern light, I could see its tracks. I traced down the path in which this bear had taken through our campsite by drawing circles around each print with a stick. It entered the camp right in front of the car, passed by the side of the car, and walked passed the front of our tent to the bear box. It found nothing under the tarp and continued on passed the campsite next to us.

It then walked into the next site and proceeded to enter the people's new car through the closed window. They said they had their ice chest in the back, it was not covered and they had left the window down just a crack. From where we were standing, we could see the scratch marks on the door and the window was gone. Inside was all torn up, But ice chest the back of the car was untouched. The bear being so big could not get to it, even after trying to claw it's way through the seats. The people did say that not all was lost for the bear. They had left some gummy bears on the dash and they found the empty package behind the car. This ought to be a good one to tell their insurance company, ESPECAILY since they live in Los Angeles.

Once everybody settled down we went back to bed, just got comfortable and suddenly I needed to go to the bathroom. Well it seemed that no one was going to be left behind. So we got in the car went down and took care of business, went back and went to bed. Our daughter went right to sleep, but not our son. He heard every noise and made sure with us it was not the bear. Needless to say, we got very little sleep.