Yield to the bear!

We finally saw a bear!  A huge black bear!  We were riding Wily E. and Roadrunner (our e-bikes) on a remote dirt mountain road high on the Mogollon Rim, and right in front of us this enormous bear came running out of the woods.  We screeched to a stop, with our mouths agape.  We yielded to the bear.

Dan yelled, “BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!   I whipped my phone out to get a picture, but couldn’t stop staring at this beautiful bear.  The bear ran across the road, up a hillside—and it was running full blast!  We were awfully glad that it wasn’t headed toward us.  The bear didn’t slow down or even look our way.  

It was our dream come true…to see a bear just doing it’s own thing, in it’s own world, the animal world, not the human world.  It was wild and magnificent!

It happened so fast that we weren’t sure if we had actually seen a bear, or if we had imagined this bear, since it has been one of our dreams to see a bear while we are out in our beloved mountain desert.  So we decided to look for evidence that a bear had actually flitted through our lives today.

This is what we found—the dirt and pine needles on the edge of the road where the bear had crossed the road was disturbed:

Since we are in the middle of the monsoon season, and it poured rain last night, we were able to find a bear print on the road.  Look at the claws that dug into the mud as he ran across the road.

So we really did see the bear!

We named the road we were on Bear Road.  Here we are on Bear Road.

We were on a “Bear high” during our entire 18-mile ride.  So we decided to celebrate.  After all, it took us eleven years to see a wild bear, hunting in it’s own territory.  Dan took me for a fancy takeout dinner at our upscale Pine restaurant.

We had a feast of pork nachos and elk burgers on our front deck!

We wonder if the bear was hot on the trail of a javelina or an elk….maybe he feasted on javelina nachos and elk burgers too.