A Bear Walks Into a Bar...

On my last trip to Glacier National Park, I got two interesting photos of bears. One was beautiful and the other not a particularly good photo, but it comes with a good story. First, before I get to the story, here is the beautiful photo. I took this from the car in the rain in Waterton Park Canada, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National. This bear crossed the road right in front of us and conveniently climbed a tree right by the car.

Now for the not so good photo with a story. We were sitting in a bar just outside of the Many Glacier area. It was an unusually warm day for Glacier Park, and the bar had the door propped open. All of a sudden, a man at the end of the bar started yelling "bear!" "bear!" Sure enough, a young bear had wandered into the bar. The bear scooted around a bit and then headed back out the door, where it proceeded to stand up and look in all of the windows.

A few moments later, a family came in. A little girl, perhaps around 8 years of age, told us "there is a bear in the parking lot!" We replied, "the bear was inside of here just a few minutes ago!" The girl began frantically tugging on her mother's arm to get her attention. When her Mother asked her what she wanted, the girl exclaimed "the bear was inside the bar!" The mother responded with "quit making up stories," and drug the child away before we could correct her.

Meanwhile the bear kept wandering the parking lot and was still in the vicinity when we left. Needless to say, the bar door was kept closed the remainder of the time that we were there.