Now, you know you’re not supposed to get between Mama Bear and Baby Bear, but we couldn’t see Mama Bear anywhere. We figured we needed to move away quickly, but not before snapping a quick picture. Unfortunately, I backed up a bit and stumbled off the boardwalk, but landed fairly well and didn’t damage any joints.
We made our way back to the campground for dinner.
We decided to skip having a fire and get to sleep sooner, as I had slept poorly the night before due to some drunken idiot yelling at a bear trying to break into his bear locker. In the middle of Saturday night, I was awakened by calf pain from stumbling off the boardwalk at the sight of Baby Bear. I had unfortunately left all of the ibuprofen (and my car keys) in Pearl’s trunk. As I lay there trying to relax the muscle and go back to sleep, I heard the bear attacking the bear locker again. Apparently he had broken it Friday night, and, rather than going to the rangers to have it repaired, Drunken Idiot tried again to scare it off. Honestly, if you yell at a bear a couple of times and he does not go away, yelling at him 30 more times will not solve the problem. If you honk your car horn two or three times and the bear shows no fear of you or your car, honking the horn another 70 or 80 times will not make things better. After something like half an hour of Drunken Idiot screaming and honking, the bear finally went away. I could still hear Drunken Idiot talking loudly to other people for half an hour after that, but during that time I woke Eric up, got his car keys, and retrieved a couple of ibuprofen. A little while later I was finally able to go back to sleep.
In the morning, I heard people in the bathroom talking about the guy who scared off the Big Scary Bear like he was some kind of hero. I went over to look at his bear locker to see how damaged it actually was.
I told him that all the screaming and yelling had been entirely unnecessary. The bear was unlikely to be a threat to him; it would have just taken his food and ambled away when it was done. He insisted that this was America and he could do what he wanted. I said that this was a group environment and that he needed to show some respect for people around him. I exercised great restraint considering how tired this Drunken Idiot had left me. He flipped me off while I was walking back to our site, but on his way out he leaned out of his car window to wish us a nice weekend. I said, “You, too,” and he said, “God bless you.” Eric thinks this guy is a good argument for banning alcohol in national parks.