Ever since we've arrived in Canada we've eyed off the great outdoors and talked about how much fun it would be to go camping in this amazing place. But I have to say, one of the biggest deterrents for me has been the thought of bears. And I have to say that it's the first time that I can say that I understand the foreigners consideration of sharks when they visit Australia. I mean, there's probably as many people killed over here by bears as there are by sharks in Australia (can't be bothered searching for any real stats to support that).
Anyway, all those little thoughts about bears that chased themselves around and around my head led me to lean towards the sort of holidays that involved cabins and hotels. And what i really wanted to buy was a big kick arse, solid walled trailer (aka caravan) that no bear was ever going to get into.
Of course, as you'll know from my recent post, we didn't buy the big kick-arse solid walled thing, we got the canvas sided tent-trailer that can be peeled open easier than a sardine can. I finally came to the conclusion though that since most of the bears up here are the black variety rather than the grizzly variety. To some extent it's like saying that they're only gummy sharks, mainly and there's only the occasional great white.
So of course, when we decide to take the thing out for our first trip, I didn't even consider where we were going and in fact it was later that we actually changed our travel plans. It wasn't really until we were at Glacier National park and we pulled in to set up that I realised exactly what we'd done.
We'd driven right into the heart of grizzly territory.
Fan dabby dozy.
It became fairly evident that there was a very proactive 'don't attract the bear' culture going on in that park. Something about the signs that demanded that you weren't allowed to keep food, cooking utensils, water, eating utensils ... pretty much anything that might have a trace of food upon it in the actual tent trailer.
So for the first time in our lives we'd gone out with everything in a place where we wouldn't have to pack and unpack and pack and unpack and the first thing we had to do was bloody unpack it all and load it into the car!
Fortunately, despite the fact that the ranger assured us that there had been a very credible mountain lion sighting the previous night, we slept well and long and after cooking our hot dogs over the camp fire, made sure everything that might attract a bear was safely stowed away. It made for a very full car and a very empty van. It's amazing what a lot of driving, staying up late and utter exhaustion can do to allay one's beary fears.
So we survived our first night camping in the rockies, even if we were to cheap and lazy to walk all the way to the showers which you had to pay for. We might have stunk for a couple of days, but maybe we'd just been spoilt by the McColl's, our hosts in Calgary.
The fact that as we prepared to get ready for the day a couple deer wandered through the park started day two of beautifully.
The second night we were a little better prepared and by virtue of the fact that a lot of people moved on that day, we were able to shift some of our storage from the car and into one of the bear-proof storage bins that are provided in the camp. And the best thing about the second night was the sky. Night one ended when the rain came down and put a downer on the camp fire. Night two was clear as can be and it was stunning. The stars were like carpet. You felt like if you reached up and swept your hand through the air, you could collect a fistful of diamonds to bring sparkling to the ground.
It was so gorgeous that when I got up to pee at 3am i was left staring in wonder ... gazing to the heavens ... right up until I remembered the bit about the mountain lions and the bears!
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