Reason #3 to change your path

If, while walking on a wooded trail, you see a mama bear and her 2 cubs next to the trail, you might want to

turn around. Alex and I decided to try the portion of the Howard Eaton trail that is near the Hot Springs Terraces. We were doing an impressive job making our way uphill, with me doing lots of talking as we were told to do to notify bears of your presence, when Alex heard scratching noises. What could that be? He spotted 2 black bear cubs climbing a tree about 250 feet away from our trail. We looked down the slope to see mama bear looking back up at us. My incessant talking had notified her. She was laying down and, thankfully, didn't seem to see a need to get up. The rule of the park is to stay 100 yards, or 50 feet more than we were, away from bears. Since I had just heard yesterday that black bears are more aggressive than grizzlies, I was a little nervous. Unfortunately for us, the trail curved closer to the bears before it turned away from them, so we chose the safer path of retreating back from where we had come, despite having such an enjoyable time walking uphill.

Back down the way we came towards the entrance to the Beaver Ponds Trail. As we were heading towards the main road, Alex pointed out a black object next to a tree that we had passed on the way up. "Ha! I thought that was a bear," he said. A little closer...it is a bear! Another black bear, bigger than mama up the hill, and much closer. What do we do? Which way do we go? We realized we must have passed this bear on the way up, but not realizing it due to the slope of the hill and his position by the tree. He was lounging and heard us approach, but could barely be bothered to lift his head to look at us. We had big decisions ahead of us. Behind us was mama and her cubs or a 2 hour loop hike to get out. Waiting wasn't an option as we were in a canyon standing in the direction the bear was likely to head when he finished his rest. We tried going off the trail to get further away from him, but that put us in tall grasses against a cliff and out of his vision, making us unknown prey instead of a known entity. Finally, we decided we had no choice but to march bravely down the trail. I asked Alex to sing his personal prayer song and I stayed right on his heals as we walked within 50 feet of him. We counted the creek and gully between us as a plus on our side, but I wasn't convinced he would really be slowed down should he decide to pounce. I managed to take a couple of pictures on our way past as the bear seemed really calm about our passing (I'm sure he liked Alex's singing), but, in my anxiety, I forgot to zoom, so they're not so great. We brought a few friends back to see him - he was browsing through the grass at this point - but made sure to stay safely well out of his way.

After all of this excitement, we went back to our dorm room and voted, thanks to our Oregon Vote by Mail ballot arriving in the General Delivery-MHS box today.