Me and my bro-in-law were in Skagway, AK for a few days (free cruise, airplane engine trouble, missed the boat, ...a nice story). Anyhow we had camped out (actually packed our sleeping bags *in case* we got a chance to camp out!) under some park benches, and just bummed around a while. Two roads lead out of Skagway...one up to White Pass and the other one is a gravel road that dead-ends basically at a glacier. This particular day we took the gravel road. ;) We had parked the car down beside an incredibly blue glacier water river and walked up to the wooden one-lane bridge to have a toast of some south Alabama rye whiskey that I had accidentally packed. We were sitting there on the bridge railing over the middle of that blue river and had toasted that glacier water or the mountains or most anything else we could think of when I turned to say something to my brother-in-law. Looking past him at the end of the bridge, between us and our rental car was a brown bear and two cubs. Well now, wasn't that an interesting situation. The bears looking at us, us looking at the bears. It was the "Hey, cool!"..."Wow!!!"..."Look at that!!!" conversation in a hushed voice to start with. That quickly lead to "I think they want to come across the bridge". I still kid my bro-in-law about his "Maybe if we sit real still they'll pass in front of us"....bridge was a single lane bridge with maybe 3' extra space on each side of a passing car. About that time the mama bear seemed to turn and "say something" to the cubs. The cubs turned around and backed further off the end of the bridge....the mama turned back to us, stood up and raised her paws above her head in the typical(?) "Let me intimidate these puny humans" fashion. My brother-in-law didn't mention anything else about letting them "pass by" us. We hopped down off the railing and headed to the opposite end of the bridge...bear still between us and the car. As soon we started walking the mama bear dropped to all fours and started padding across the bridge, following behind us...soon to be followed by the cubs. When we got to the end of the bridge it had kind of a wall on each side. We paused for a moment and one of us said that if the mama charged at us we'd jump over the wall....we peeked over the wall and it was about 25' down to big rocks. The mama got to the end of the bridge and we're like "WE'RE DINNER!!!!" when suddenly she peeled off into the woods on the opposite side. The cubs, a few steps behind, followed her lead. I swear one of those cubs tried to set us up....as it dove into the underbrush it let out a squeal...I think it was trying to get it's mama to come back and "get us"!!!!! Durn bears. I've got a picture of them some where when they first started crossing the bridge behind us (shot over my shoulder as we exited the bridge!!!! :-D ). We had to have another toast after that!!! ;) The bad part of that entire trip was that we had to eventually get on that boat for the ride back down the inner passage...cruises are nice, if you don't have to get on the boat.
JP, that's quiet a memory you have there....treed by black bears!!!!!!!!! Maybe they heard about you and don't like the competition doing cut outs? :-D
Ed