George and I love to be outdoors.Particularly, we LOVE to camp! We used to camp a lot more than we do now. Something about shooting weddings just about every weekend of camping season changed that a bit. The good news is that we got back in the habit this year. It was our furthest excursion yet…Baxter State Park in Maine. Four days and three nights with no running water, no electricity and no internet. Ahhh…..

My good friend Ted had been planning to undertake the same trip, but had a job interview scheduled last minute for the first full day of the trip. He would join us later.

I had been feeling quite under the weather all week, so George took the wheel of my trusty Tacoma and we headed North. A few stops in the area, including a very important stop at my parents house in Arlington to pick up a pot of my mom’s famous chili and we were off. The drive time would be just over five hours from my parent’s house to the gate of the park. It would be another thirty minutes to Roaring Brook Campground.

At the gate, Geri, a very friendly and helpful ranger, warned us of the bear problems they were having at Roaring Brook and expressed the importance of being vigilant. We heeded her warning and headed to the campground. Our first experience with wildlife in the park took place about two minutes after entering the park. George took a quick glance to his left right as a large deer bounded right in front of the truck. "DEER!!!" I yelled as George turned his head forward, slammed the brakes and just avoided a collision. "How’s your adrenaline right now?" I asked him a moment later. "Dude!" was his response.

We arrived at the campground, checked in with the ranger, and got going on dinner. Burgers and dogs on an open fire. Yum!

Our campsite was situation adjacent to Roaring Brook, so the sound of the water dulled all the other sounds around us. At one point, we both heard what we thought was someone yelling followed by a car horn. Turns out a couple of bear cubs were invading a site just across the road from us. This was followed by the sound of a can of pepper spray being emptied and a ranger yelling "Get out of here bear!" Soon after, the call came from the next site over, "BEAR!" This was followed by a lady saying, "That’s it, I’m going home." I guess she had had enough. We realized that Geri wasn’t joking about the bears. As we were settling into our lean-to for the evening, we had one of the bear cubs run through our site, just about ten feet from us. We triple-checked to make sure all our food was in the cab of the truck. I didn’t tell George about the peanut butter cups I put in the bottom of his sleeping bag. Just kidding.

We had planned to hike Katahdin the next day, but we were lacking a very important piece of equipment to make it happen – an alarm clock. Baxter State Park is so far removed that cell phones don’t work and we neglected to take that into consideration when planning the trip. Because the days are short in the fall and the hike to Baxter Peak so long, the hike must start near sun-up. We woke up around 8:20 a.m. The campground was practically empty. Most people were already on the mountain or heading home before the weekend crowd showed up. Keep this in mind as you read the next part of this story.

Since we weren’t hiking, we decided to make a big breakfast – eggs and bacon in the iron skillet. We were just barely finished cooking the first batch of bacon, when George shouted "BEAR!" One of the cubs had clearly taken an interest in our bacon and was doing everything it could to eat our breakfast for us. We did as instructed. We yelled, waved our arms, stomped the ground, and banged cooking utensils together. Clearly, the cub had no fear of us and really wanted our bacon. We managed to keep an eye on it while we got all our other food back into the truck cab and then attended to shooing the bear and finishing our breakfast preparation. Before long, the second cub caught the scent of our bacon and joined in the frolic.

We spent about 45 minutes trying to keep them away from the food and finally managed to sneak in a few bites of warmish bacon and eggs between the cubs sneak attacks. In the end, we had our breakfast, the bears did not, and no one was hurt. It didn’t dawn on us until sometime toward the end of the attempted breakfast robbery that the bears were so persistent because we were the only ones around and one of the only sources of food that morning. No wonder they had been so persistent. As we packed up, there was no sign of the cubs. "They must have found another food source" I said to George.

We stopped at the Roaring Brook ranger’s cabin on our way out to check out. As we pulled through the day-hikers’ parking lot, we noticed a bunch of people with cameras standing around a white pick-up truck at the other end of the parking lot. I quickly caught sight of one of the cubs sitting on the back railing of the pick-up. The ranger had left the campground to get supplies so no one was around to manage the situation. Since George and I had 45 minutes more experience than the people standing around the truck, we decided to take action. We quickly scared one cub up into the woods. The other cub was down in the truck bed with a mouth full of graham crackers that someone had foolishly left out. We eventually scared that one out of the truck bed. I quickly cleaned up what remained of the graham crackers while George kept a watchful eye on the cubs who were a mere 15 feet into the woods, if that.

We walked back to my truck. As we climbed back in, we watched one of the cubs climb right back into the bed of the truck, looking for the rest of his meal. What some of the onlookers failed to understand was that although the cubs were "cute and cuddly," they are wild animals and should not see humans as a food source. They should be scared of people. To have two very young cubs so unafraid of people is a terrible situation for the cubs. They could become "nuisance" bears who lose their fear of people. When this happens, a person usually steps over the line and tries to interact with the bear. What happens then? The person gets hurt and the bear gets shot. A classic lose-lose situation. Wildlife is called so for a reason. Please be vigilant when in an animal’s territory. Being "nice" could cost an animal its life. I’ll now step off my soapbox.

We headed out of the campground in search of some geocaches George had researched before the trip. We found two rather easily. The third took us down "The worst road in Maine." My Tacoma had never seen the likes of this before. George was out of the truck at one point spotting to make sure we had enough clearance to get over some of the massive rocks we encountered. We gave up before we got to the third geocache, but had quite the adventure trying to get there. We did find a beautiful, secluded campsite situated right on the beach of a lake at the end of the road. A group was there and had somehow managed to pull a boat on a boat trailer out the road we had just traveled. We still have now idea how the guy did it.

Late that afternoon, we headed back into Baxter. We were headed for Nesowadnehunk Field Campgroud to set up camp for the next two nights and await Ted’s arrival.

 

Our Lean-To site at Roaring Brook Campground

 

 

Roaring Brook

 

 

 Cute, but wild and smart.

 

 

This is what one cub would do when I ran toward it yelling and banging a metal spatula on a pan lid.

 

 

Looking for a snack

 

 

Sniffing around our fire – it’s all gone buddy!

 

 

The other cub is out of sight down in the bed of the truck eating graham crackers.

 

 

The first geocache

 

 

We concur.

 

 

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