I just have to outrun the person next to me.
What a great line.
Do you know why the grizzly is on the California State Flag? Up until the gold rush, grizzlies were very common in California. Nice climate, plentiful food, seasonal salmon runs. The last California grizzly was killed in 1922.
Once upon a time Grizzlies were native to my home state of Iowa too, right along the Missouri River. I don’t doubt they spent the winters in the stretch of loess hills across the road from my home. Probably ate a lot of the same wild foods I ate as a kid, wild raspberries and plums, chokecherries, wild asparagus, morels- stuff we scoured the woods for.
A grizzly bear can run up to 30 mph. And he can get up to speed in under 6 seconds.
Doesn’t give you a lot of time to react. I spent a week backpacking in Glacier National Park - terrified, just waiting for that bear attack. Never came, thank god. I saw plenty of big horn sheep, mountain goats, and I encountered a marmot that refused to move off the trail and insisted upon sniffing my backpack.
When the kids were little we stayed one night in a cabin outside of West Yellowstone - in an area frequented by grizzly bears. The area was quite scenic, unfortunately the cabin was full of mice, so full of mice they were kind of like lemmings. Yes, that full. The kids wanted to sleep with all the lights on so no mice would run over them while they slept. I decided I’d rather face a grizzly than have my baby chewed on by a mouse so I took the baby and slept in the car knowing full well that an adult grizzly was perfectly capable of ripping off the car door. I chose the possibility of a grizzly encounter over a guaranteed encounter with mice. (My husband does want me to mention that this was the height of the Hanta Virus scare.)
Humans are not grizzly prey, we just happen to get in the way sometimes.
Now a black bear will occasionally stalk a human. A rare occurance, but good to know.
My daughter has seen a lot of bears in Montana this year, most of them black bears but the occasional brown black bears too, and lots of cubs.
Speaking of bears, we went to the beach today. Not a warm sunny beach like you think a beach should be, a northern California beach - cold, misty, mournful, isolated, rough, absolutely beautiful. On the way home my husband took this picture of the Bay. Nice.
I think, henceforth ye shall be known as Juliepedia the source for travel, gardening and nature information.
Nice day at the beach, eh! i would.have spent the day building an ark, a) if it hadn’t been so wet, and b) if I.lnew which way to hold a hammer
xxx
We’ve had a lot of bear sightings here lately.
What a beautiful picture of the beach.
We have black bears in Connecticut too, but no Grizzlies. The beach photo is beautiful!
Last night on Longmire, I heard that bear line again, and I love it too. Remember seeing bears who used to gather at the dumps in Yellowstone and paw through the rubbish. My father took us all in our new Dodge station wagon. We lined up next to several others, like at a movie. Sure enough, the bears came. Big black bears. Beautiful.
But then all of a sudden they all stood up on their haunches and sniffed the air. They ran off. A few seconds later a Grizzly and her cub came to the site, and had the whole restaurant to herself. She was smaller than the big black bears, but she had enough scars on her fur that we knew she was used to wars, and liked to win.
My dad wisely left the motor running.
Beautiful picture of the bay. I guess you wouldn’t want to read the new book by Linda Howard then about a black bear stalking the heroine (Prey). Growing up in the southwest I was nearly as afraid of bears as the other livestock roaming the desert.
Sharon - I’m glad they no longer have those dumps but boy was it hard to get the bears to fend for themselves! Generations of bears were raised to scavenge garbage. Black bears know who the boss is… the grizzly!
You got to take a very cool trip. When I visited Yellowstone it was long after the new policy had been instituted. Rarely saw a bear.
Casey and Amber - you on the East Coast do have lots of bears. We’re having a black bear population boom in California too. The beach was too foggy for a photo, Casey so he took this from the car after we got back over the mountains. It was freezing on the Pacific, warm on the Bay.
But Anny, it really is rare! Most black bears are way more afraid of us.
Yes Tom the Juliepedia! I love nature. When we climbed the cliffs above the ocean I was hoping to see a big fin! No luck tho!
I’ve had a close encounter with a bear and never want to go through one again..
lol. Always loved that line. You know what, I would have done the same thing too at the threat of mice. I’m absolutely terrified of them. Never encountered a bear anywhere except for the zoo though, but those pics look so scenic. You’re surrounded by such beautiful landscape, I’m glad you take advantage of it.
There have been bear sighted quite recently in this area. And I understand that in northern PA bird feeders attract a lot of bears - apparently they can’t spell.
Most Floridians totally forget, but we do have bears here. They are smaller than bears out west and they are pretty shy-a good thing for both bears and people!
Oh Savannah, I would love to hear the story - or put it in one of your books!
Oh Delilah… mice! I’m not terrified of them but there was the concern about the very deadly Hanta Virus… We no longer have grizzlies in California.
Hi Steph. Yes, I understand bears are quite partial to bird feeders. They are omnivores after all!
Interesting, Charlee. Little bears, huh? I’d love to see them.
They are a variety of black bears and I think they can get up to about 4ft and 300 lbs. Still big enough you don’t want to mess with one but nothing so scary as a brown bear or a grizzly.
Now THAT would be a difficult choice for me: sleeping in a cabin filled with mice or in a car waiting for a bear to break in. Hmm. Sounds like a possibility for Fear Factor. Our outing yesterday was to take the kids to see BRAVE (it’s the red-head thing that had us all cheering for the heroine). If you ask almost 8-year-old Gannon what his favorite part was, it was the magic that transformed certain characters into bears, but even though they were big and scary, they were still the real people underneath the fur.
Great blog, Julia!
No choice, Marilyn - easy choice for me. I’ll take the bear. Yes, scary, but mice running across my body are scarier. I’ll have to see that movie!
Charlee- I’m going to look up photos of those bears!