OH MY!
So I wrote part of this yesterday, and my internet connection pooped and I hadn’t saved it. Sorry! But my story got better this morning, and here it goes:
We arrived last night in Katmai National Park, home to some 3,000 grizzly bears. In fact this is where the famous Grizzly Man film, with Timothy Treadwell was made. But enough about him, because if you haven’t seen the movie, he was a total nutter!
So we get into the zodiac for low tide, when the bears come to the beach and feed on clams. Luckily, the production company had to pay booku bucks to have a filming permit for this park, but the upside was that they provided a Ranger to accompany us in our boat. She was awesome! He name is Wendy, and she has been a national parks ranger since 1985, serving in just about every park that we have in this vast country and she had the stories to prove it. She directed us to all the right places last night and we saw 4 different bear. Things got even better this morning. I woke up feeling horrible, because I have acquired a wretched cold, and our producer told me, that if I wasn't feeling well, I should stay behind and they would just get footage of the bears.
I am soooo glad that I didn’t. We picked up Wendy in the ranger hut, zoomed past the other passengers that were out in their zodiacs already and found a mama bear and her 2-3 year old cub down on the beach. They were the same cute pair that we had seen the night before. So we cut the engine, and we pulled out the oars and started to row the boat in. We ended up being 10 Feet from them! Now, the best way to put this in perspective is the fact that you are supposed to be 50 feet from the bears, but since we were on the water, and the bears were not even acknowledging our presence, Wendy let up creep all the way in. The water was getting pretty shallow, and the mom could easily have reached us within 10 seconds. It was AMAZING. We stayed there for awhile filming and watching and just feeling in awe of the moment. We then cruised on to find another guy down at the beach, and he was so animated. He would dig up the clams, and then pounce on them to crack them open. Imagine weighing enough to crack a clam with you hands just by landing on it. Wow
So I wrote part of this yesterday, and my internet connection pooped and I hadn’t saved it. Sorry! But my story got better this morning, and here it goes:
We arrived last night in Katmai National Park, home to some 3,000 grizzly bears. In fact this is where the famous Grizzly Man film, with Timothy Treadwell was made. But enough about him, because if you haven’t seen the movie, he was a total nutter!
So we get into the zodiac for low tide, when the bears come to the beach and feed on clams. Luckily, the production company had to pay booku bucks to have a filming permit for this park, but the upside was that they provided a Ranger to accompany us in our boat. She was awesome! He name is Wendy, and she has been a national parks ranger since 1985, serving in just about every park that we have in this vast country and she had the stories to prove it. She directed us to all the right places last night and we saw 4 different bear. Things got even better this morning. I woke up feeling horrible, because I have acquired a wretched cold, and our producer told me, that if I wasn't feeling well, I should stay behind and they would just get footage of the bears.
I am soooo glad that I didn’t. We picked up Wendy in the ranger hut, zoomed past the other passengers that were out in their zodiacs already and found a mama bear and her 2-3 year old cub down on the beach. They were the same cute pair that we had seen the night before. So we cut the engine, and we pulled out the oars and started to row the boat in. We ended up being 10 Feet from them! Now, the best way to put this in perspective is the fact that you are supposed to be 50 feet from the bears, but since we were on the water, and the bears were not even acknowledging our presence, Wendy let up creep all the way in. The water was getting pretty shallow, and the mom could easily have reached us within 10 seconds. It was AMAZING. We stayed there for awhile filming and watching and just feeling in awe of the moment. We then cruised on to find another guy down at the beach, and he was so animated. He would dig up the clams, and then pounce on them to crack them open. Imagine weighing enough to crack a clam with you hands just by landing on it. Wow
2 comments:
You certainly have some experience with animals that large--Mr Pants could easily crack open a mollusk that way, eh?
OH Yea Mr Pants could that!!!
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