"While strolling through the park one day...."

In late June, my wife and I spent 4 days at Glacier National Park. Typical for us, we hiked the trails into the mountains so we could view wildlife and get away from the road-bound tourists.

I had considered taking a sidearm (it's now legal in the national parks), but figured some tree-hugger, greenie, anti-gun liberal (take your pick) would see it and go screaming through the forest, "He's got a gun!"

Of course it had to happen - when we were on a trail that was 5 miles from the nearest road, we rounded a corner and there stood a grizzly!

It was happily munching something and even though it saw us, it didn't seem to care. We backed away slowly and I shot the attached photo (DSC_0241). Unfortunately, I had the 18mm lens on the camera and could not take a good close-up. (I had been trying to take panoramic shots of the mist-covered mountains.)

This was the good news.

We didn't backtrack more than 50 yards when we saw the black bear in the other photo. It was headed toward the grizzly at a fast lope. After snapping a picture (DSC_0244), we decided that running in the opposite direction was a better idea!

We didn't get more than 75 yards from where we saw the grizzly and we heard the 2 bears snarling at each other. I'm guessing that the black bear had cubs nearby. Based on the wind direction, she must have smelled the grizzly.

A neat experience, but next time I'm taking the .44

- browningbbr