Johnson's Update: The Bear Story

Sorry it has been so long since our last entry, but we have been as busy as a one arm paper hanger with a couple of broken fingers. If you want to read about our drive up here I will refer you to our Dan Webster's blog at http://www.getjealous.com/Spenweb . Dan is a long time sailing friend who's life is more convoluted that Jude and mine. He is originally from Owosso who has sailed his boat from Bay City, MI, to the Gulf of Mexico, across the pond and has the boat currently in Turkey. Add on to that is they own a home in New Zealand. Oh yes, they are currently living in East Lansing so that his wife Mary can finish up her Michigan teaching retirement.

We arrive at out new home back on May 3. Dan was a tremendous help getting us moved up here. One more time, thanks Dan.

Since then we have been busy with things that go with buying a new house. The first thing we obviously did was unload the U-Haul and move all of the stuff into the house. Once that was accomplished we decided to head off to the Kenai Peninsula for a little fun. This being Dan's first trip to Alaska we wanted to show him around a bit. While we were down there we spent three days digging clams. Dan's website does a very good job of what that all entailed.

Our last night on the Kenai we decided to camp at a great fishing hole at the Russian River. Since the salmon were not running yet, we had the place to ourselves. We spent the afternoon cleaning the remainder of our clams and retired for the evening. In the morning Jude was the first out of the camper and taking a little walk around the parking lot. I followed shortly behind with coffee in hand. Jude had walked the 100 foot to the boat launch and then headed up the slight hill. I then left the camper and walked to the launch with Jude about 50 feet up the hill toward the outhouse when she yelled two words to me, "Rob, bear!" There was a 3-400 lbs Brown Bear (Alaskan for Grizzly Bear) coming up behind the camper. I yelled, "Dan, stay in the camper." Of course the first thing he did was open the door and say, "What?" The message was transferred and he headed back into the camper. So here is the situation: 50 feet behind the camper is this bear and 100 feet in front of the camper are Jude and I, although not right together. I worked my way up to where Jude was standing. So at this point Dan is trapped in the camper and Jude and I are standing next to the outhouse. All of the while this is going on the bear could care less. He was still on the other side of the camper laying down eating what ever was there. At this point in time a guy in a pickup pulled into the parking lot and came up to us and asked us if we needed to be rescued. Of course we said yes. He said OK, but he had to drive to the bear to get some pictures! The bear still did not move away. He came back and rescued us took a few more picture and got us back to the camper. Dan passed out the Bear Spray and I guarded him as he cranked in the camper slide. The bear was still unconcerned with our presence. The three of us got into the truck and drove out of the lot. The only time the bear moved away from what he was doing was when the truck was driven at him. The rest of the trip was uneventful.

The outhouse has the blue roof.