Bear Encounter!

Today the kids and I had quite a thrilling adventure.  We were out for a "hike" in our neighborhood and had ventured about 1/2 mile from our house when a large black bear popped out of the woods about 40-50 feet in front of us!  I was in awe for about a second and then I was terrified!  I yelled " Holy #@*& It's a bear!"picked up Ben, pulled Riley and Nate close to me and at first did what I knew from watching safety videos was the right thing to do…I told that bear we were going to just back away slowly and started moving diagonally backwards.  Then since it was facing the other way and was down hill and probably couldn't see us, I told the kids to speedwalk and then we picked up to a run…with my head over my shoulder keeping my eye on the big guy.  He was headed toward the road so we had to run all around the lake.  We got to the dog park (on the side of the lake away from the bear) and I started shouting to the people there about the bear.  Since we didn't know what direction the bear was going to go, we went in the dog park because there was about 20 people and lots of dogs there.  After a few minutes the bear crossed the street and entered the woods on the other side so we quickly walked home - the rest of the way was on sidewalks by houses so we felt safe.  That was our first bear sighting in the wild! Mesh was on call and at work so he missed the excitement but the kids and I will be retelling him this story for years to come!

This was taken a few minutes before we saw the bear. We saw him down below us on the other side of the path when we were almost to the end of the lake near the road.  

I did not stop to take a picture when we were close to the bear but tried to snap one while we were much farther away in the dog park with a crowd of people waiting for it to decide which direction it was going before we continued our walk home.

A much safer encounter later in the day. :)