I Saw a Bear!

Confession time.

Every year when we go to Tennessee I ask if anyone has seen a bear.

I almost always get the same answer.

Yes, so and so did last week/month.

I miss them every time.

You would think that in the 23 years I have been visiting Tennessee I would have seen one.

Nope, not once.

I'm happy to announce that my bear drought is over!

This black blob is a bear.

I have five witnesses who saw him too.

As you can see, he's fairly far into the field.

We saw this bear while we were at Cades Cove.

Made my day!

After we left Cades Cove we headed to Clingmans Dome.

This goofy sign was somewhere along the way.

I had a good chuckle over this.

(Might have something to do with being giddy from seeing the bear.)

You would never see this in our flat area of Indiana.

Although, as clumsy as I am, I might need one.

Beautiful waterfall.

Yes, this is another beautiful waterfall.

How could one ever get tired of seeing these?

This waterfall came with a "don't swim or you'll die" warning.

That's my version of what the sign said.

OK, so my bear drought is history, but we had another surprise in store for us.

We saw another bear on our way out of the Cades Cove area.

How cool is that?

The black round shadow in the middle? A bear butt.

Yes, laugh all you want.

We got much closer to this bear.

There was a crowd of people taking pictures.

There also happened to be a park ranger there too.

He said he wanted to get a picture of this bear.

Then when the bear moved down the ravine and toward

us he said, "That's a bad bear."

He might as well have yelled, "Fire!" because we scattered

like people should when a bear is headed your way.

While the masses were fleeing, he blew an air horn.

And that's the story of my second bear.

Special thanks to Dan for turning around when I hollered that there was a bear.