Dad 'n' Bear

[dalesys]

My dad (90) with a grizzly bear the size of the one that charged he and Mom on their motorcycle, one evening in the summer of '83 as they were leaving the east side of Yellowstone.

It roared louder than wolfie's air horn. My mother said, "Did you know that a bear's tongue vibrates when it roars?"

[Pixelated]

That would've been the point when I would've been checking out the ability of my vehicle to get airborne ...

[dalesys]

This is my dad's story, appended to the picture a few days later:
We were on our way through Yellowstone Park from Fishing Bridge toward the East Entrance and on to Cody, Wyoming where a very narrow road cuts through a dense forest with very steep hillsides, and a very narrow road with hardly enough space to pass on-coming traffic.

And suddenly a huge mother bear like the one in this picture, and her year old cub came rolling down through the dense forest and out on to the highway right in front of us, scuffling with each other. The cub rolled to our side of the highway and the mother bear stopped and stood to her full vertical length (like the attached photo - directly in front of us.) Then she dropped to all four legs, and opened her mouth to show her huge teeth and her tongue vibrating, and her eyes reflecting our headlight, with a roar that almost broke our ear-drums.

We pulled our legs as close to the bike as was possible, and I tipped the bike away from those vicious teeth and gunned the engine so as to get past her. Those teeth - and they missed us by inches - so close that I could see the head of the bear as if it had a grip on Catherine's leg - but we were missed by inches, and with our ear drums ringing we swished on by and left the bears behind us.

Just before we saw the bears, we were complaining because it was getting cold and we thought we should stop and put on another layer of clothing. But after the bear experience, we were able to ride all the way to Cody, Wyoming without adding any more layers of clothing. We remembered how loud her roar was - louder than a semi-truck air horn - how large her teeth were, and how her tongue vibrated - and how her hair stood on end and the muscles in her shoulders rolled as she charged toward us. We feel very blessed to have escaped injury.. This stuffed grizzly is about the size of the mother bear that just missed us.We feel very lucky to have survived without any injury. Frank

[Pixelated]

I can well believe they didn't feel the need to stop and put on more layers after that! I've never even had an encounter with a smaller bear, but they would be scary enough.