Tracking ...

The 32 beans - turned out wonderful - diced up a yellow onion, minced some garlic, seasoned ... and the half pound of bacon may also have helped! Some bacon wrapped chicken and a side of Parmesan noodles made the meal a success! ... of course the beans didn't cook for as long as I would have liked - but the flavor was all there. Ended up buying some firewood for a campfire ... I think they must super-dry it in a furnace, then infuse it with gasoline ... because it always burns instantly and suddenly the whole bundle is gone! At least it lasted long enough to roast the chicken on!

really, really, cold though. i.e. as soon as the fire was not roaring, we all left and went to bed. Cold. luckily, I have a super warm mummy bag (with built in pillow!) so I fell right asleep and woke up early! Well ... technically, Meg woke up before me, but she has an alarm, since she wanted to go see the sunrise - which we did - and everyone agreed that it was too cold to stay awake - even with the glorious day, so they headed back to camp.

Sunrise coming up over the lake, I figured, why not head down to the lake? Needless to say, it is significantly colder ON the water, than just looking AT the water! I had to keep my battery under my armpit to make sure it was warm enough to take a picture when I needed it! So, after wandering around on the lake for a good half hour, I came across a large fresh track! Bear! Sweet - we had heard that there was a mother bear and cub in our general camp area, and to watch out for it - so of course I followed the main track for a few yards ... and what did I find ... another smaller set of tracks! Well - now the game was on!

I tracked them up the lakeside, up a small overhang, across the main road, and kind of lost them there ... wandered through the woods for a little while and found a set of tracks that looked relatively fresh ... that day for sure ... but definitely older ... and followed those deeper into the woods, coming across several major sleeping areas, places where they'd eaten, and where ALL the trees were covered in bear hair easily fifteen feet up! matted in bear hair. followed tho tracks in amongst the trees, out into some fields, under trees, found pretty fresh scat, kept tracking.

Almost died when a jackrabbit lept out from a log behind me and thumped down right next to me. I didn't even move the camera.

Came to a conclusion after tracking for over an hour in the woods - bears are lazy. Occasionally I would lose the trail - and all you have to do to find it again is look for the easiest path that leads away from where you are. Go over a tree? nope. Through a shrub? nope. Back up the path a little ways to level side trail? yep.

Finally, after about an hour and a half, I had followed the moderately fresh tracks up to some very new ones! Excellent! I followed these with renewed relish, some ketchup and a touch of deli mustard. over a field, through the woods, across a road, and right up to ... the lake. yep. tracked myself right back to the original prints.

On the one hand ... I was pretty impressed that I did manage to actually track that much. But a little disappointed that I didn't get a glimpse of the bear ... until I took a closer look at the only clean set of tracks at the lake ... and counted the toe/claws ... and realized that I was one toe short of a bear in my quick initial assessment ... I had been tracking an enormous wolf! good thing my tracking skills aren't better honed ...