Am I right side up?

Every year around the 4th of July, my niece is in a twirling competition that gives the entire family a reason to take a few days and head up to the Adirondacks.  We go to Old Forge for a couple days, enjoy Water Safari, and watch my niece twirl her heart out.  This year, we tried to do it a little differently.

We all normally stay at the Hotel across the street from the water park, but this year, we decided we were going to camp.  We have the tent and all the fixings and just had a successful trip to Green Lakes State Park in Syracuse, so we figured, what the heck?  We were only going to be there to sleep for the most part, so we could save a little money, and enjoy the lovely Adirondack mountains up close and personal.  While I think this is a good idea, the rest of my wife's family told us they would visit the camp site, but stay at the usual hotel.

We get to our site and get everything set up.  So far, no biggie.  The campground is very rustic.  The roads were narrow and somewhat difficult to figure out.  On the other hand, the beach is clean and showcases a very nice view of the Adirondacks.  Our site was fairly small with the back of the site leading down into a heavily wooded ravine.  The only thing of note so far, is that, during check-in, they mention that there are bears in the area and that you need to put food, coolers and garbage in your car and covered up so the bears can't see them.

We finish the day at Water Safari then back to the camp for a wind-down fire.  My sister-in-law and their family show up and we roasted some marshmallows.  About 9:30pm, they pile in their van and head back to the hotel they where they were staying.  As they leave, they encounter a small bear cub about 300 yards from our camp, so they double back around to let us know.  As they pull back up and lower the window to call me over my daughter looks back towards them and says "There it is!" 

Not knowing what she's talking about, I spin around on the picnic table and see a large shadow between our picnic table and our car and tent.  I shine the flashlight on it and sure enough, it's a full grown adult black bear.  Did I mention that the bear was between us and our tent AND car?  Did you also remember that I said that there was a ravine just beyond our fire pit? Just wanted to make sure you understood those points, because they certainly weren't lost on me.

When I put the light directly on the bear, it was walking around our picnic table and crossed towards our fire getting approximately 5 feet from me as I got up to walk around the picnic table.  The crazy thing to us was that this bear didn't seem to care that we were still awake, making noise and sitting by the fire.  The other point that stuck with us is that the bear didn't seem to be afraid.  Actually, he/she seemed far from it.  It was as cool as can be.  I decided to politely ask the bear to leave with a someone confident "YEAH!  GET!" 

To which it seemed to think, "who does this guy think he is?"  and "will you PLEASE get that light out of my eyes, it's not very nice"

When he was finished inspecting our campsite, he decided to meander over to the neighbors site with me reporting his location to the neighbors' with my pathetic "Bear, bear, BEAR!" emergency notification system.

Thanks to my advanced notice, the neighbors were able to get into their car before the near 300 pounder (it gets bigger every time I tell the story!) made his way over to see what they forgot to put away.

Now that the immediate threat was gone, we retreated to our car to assess our situation.  I tried to get my wife and daughter to see the wonder of the situation, but all they could see was the bear.  I explained how we could retire to our tent and sleep peacefully knowing that we've been there, done that with the bear, but they weren't buying it.

A quick phone call later, and we were on our way to join the rest of the family in the hotel.  They were booked, but had a no-show and considering they were closing around 11 (it was 10:45 by now) they gave us the room after looking at my terrified daughter and equally terrified wife (although she was doing a good job trying to cover it up in front of my daughter).

The next morning, we made the walk of shame back to our campsite to retrieve our tent and it's contents.  What?  You didn't think we took it down at night did you?  Nooooooo.. did you miss the part where I said there was as bear???  Anyway, we got talking with the neighbors again, and they said our bear friend made a return trip at least once and ripped open a package of paper plates they had mistakenly left out.  So we packed up, gave the neighbors the rest of our firewood and decided to rough it again in the hotel.

The moral of the story?  The t-shirt we found summed it up nicely..

Bears love campers.  They taste like chicken!