At least the bears and coyotes left us alone. It was definitely a restless night at the free tentsites behind Grumpy Bear’s restaurant but beggars can’t be choosers.
The pack of wild coyotes seemed to be taunting the lone dog, mimicking his howling and barking patterns. The dog seemed to keep the coyotes at bay but definitely kept as awake as it howled and barked all night which also made it hard to sleep.
A sigh of relief washed over me as I realized the dog was just barking at the coyotes and not a bear. Long plaintive coyote calls answered in the fields where we’d searched for arrowheads earlier. Bleary-eyed with adrenaline shooting through my veins, I sat up straining my ears to figure out if the dog was alerting us to a bear or other predator nearby. Just as we were about to fall asleep again, the dog across the street at Triple Crown Outfitters started barking like crazy. We sleepily shuffled back to our tent in the inky darkness with zero bear encounters. I’d rather have a mouse get into our food versus a bear because at least the mouse wouldn’t be able to eat everything in one go!
In the ladies room (which was marginally cleaner than the guys bathroom) we shoved our food boxes up against a window, closing the door right behind us. We grabbed our food boxes and in the dark carefully picked our way across the dusty lot, walking to the bathroom while shining our headlamps around looking for red reflecting eyes from black bears. When the chuffing and snuffling got a little too close for comfort, I woke up Shannon who agreed that the animal definitely sounded a lot like a black bear. In the dark, I tried wishfully thinking that the large sniffing animal would go away but I knew that it would probably be attracted to the scent of our food. When the snuffling got louder and closer to us, my stomach dropped because I realized that our post office box full of food was just lying in the tent vestibule right next to where we were sleeping. Start: Grumpy Bear’s Retreat in Kennedy MeadowsĪfter a long night of listening to some large creature snuffling near our tent in the dark and trying to paw its way into a large plastic barrel nearby, we were a little on edge and sleep deprived in the morning.
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