Last week we stayed near Marias Pass, halfway between East and West Glacier. We drove to St Mary’s Visitor Center to see the Native American displays. Since the sun was out intermittently, we drove a few miles farther into the park to take pictures. As we were leaving, the battery in John’s 35mm camera ran out of juice.
We then drove to the Many Glacier entrance to Glacier and waited through road work to get there. We entered and drove to the end and decided to take a short walk before our picnic.
I’m still nauseated from the two heavy duty anti-biotics, so I’m not taking Tylenol, so can’t take much walking. None of the trails were short, so we decided to walk a little ways on the Grinnel Glacier trail. We went across a nice bridge over the river and continued to the tiny lake, then turned around to return to the car. As we walked to the lake, we met many other hikers going both directions. I asked all the ones coming back from the lake if they’d seen any bears, none had. As we were returning to the river, we stopped to take a picture with the movie camera of an interesting tree stump that resembled an elephant with the trunk truncated or a dolphin head. Another photographer was going the same direction, so I asked what he thought it resembled, he said an elephant with the trunk cut short. He started walking toward the river, I followed with John behind me. Since I walk so slowly, John had been stopping to whittle the bark off his walking stick. I glanced back at him and saw a large cinnamon black bear following him down the path, gaining on him. I calmly and loudly told him to walk quickly, without rushing, because a bear is behind him. John rarely believes anything I say without checking for himself, but he said the look on my face convinced him that a bear was indeed behind him. As we approached the bridge, I noticed the other photographer on the bridge taking pictures, so I called out to tell him the bear was behind us. John and I passed him and started across the bridge, he went back to face/photograph the bear briefly before joining us across the bridge. We hurried around the turn in the path beyond the bridge. John didn’t think the bear would cross the bridge because it is manmade, but I thought he would because it, like the path, is the route of least resistance. The bear started across the bridge. I’m the slowest person walking, so John was concerned about my safety and luckily had the peace of mind to yell at the bear, who rushed across the bridge toward us then went straight on into the woods. When the bear was gone, we stopped to see the pictures taken by the photographer, who had a huge long lens to photograph birds. He had taken some great shots of the bear. Then we all continued to our cars.
