Lucie Meets a Bear - Our Vacation Continues

On Thursday, July 22 after taking a quick tour of Telluride, we headed back to Ridgway.

Even the ride back after the trails was beautiful! We passed the Double RL ranch on the way back, owned by single RL Ralph Lauren, sorry no pix we passed by too quick.

 As we reached to top of the mesa where our house is located, we were welcomed by the local deer once again.

 Lucie just loves deer now.
(with potatoes)

 This deer was near the driveway to our house.

We arrived home at about 4 p.m. and opened up the doors to both decks to let in the fresh mountain air. I swear I could sit on our deck for hours and never tire of the scenery. Lucie discovered how much fun running back and forth between the two decks could be. Seems there was always something new to watch.

The night before while I was sitting on the deck after darkness had fallen, I could hear the roar of our local Black Bear. The longer I sat out there and listened to him, the closer the sound of his roar became.

 With as dense as the woods are, who knows how close he could have been.
(Ridgway police: we traced the roar, it's coming from inside the house!)

Actually, the next day we saw "Yogi was hear" carved into our garage door.  The fact that he used 'hear" and the well known fact that bears are horrible with homophones verified his identity and lead us to believe we had a full-on bear infestation.

Later in the evening, Ron headed to Ridgway to pick up some supplies and dinner.

  Then we relaxed with dinner on our deck.

 

 
After dinner, Lucie and I headed outside to explore the cliffs around our house.We found this little fellow waiting for us right outside of the garage as soon as we opened it.

I have no idea what kind of bird he was but he allowed us to get real close to him. He was not afraid at all so I showed him and taught him a valuable lesson.  Beware the hand of man!!!  Just kidding, I threw rocks at him till he flew away ;)

 After a quick look at him, it didn't look like he was hurt so we continued on our way. By the time we came back from our walk he was gone.  I suspect he was a victim of the packs of bears that roam the mountain at that time of the day.

This is our view from the cliff behind our house. We had to be very careful when walking around because of the cacti and plummeting 900 foot fall that could be taken by stepping wrong.

As you can see there is no grass in the area so we always took Lucie for a walk around the neighborhood to do her business (She's an accountant).

 The neighborhood is always so quiet and peaceful. 

At the end of Lucie's walk, as we were heading up the street we noticed a large black animal stumble upon the road. From a distance all we could see was that it was huge and covered in black fur. We knew that there was a Black Bear in the area but just couldn't make out what it was. I had forgotten to take my camera with me on this particular walk. Just my luck.

(Here is a picture that I had taken a different day to show you where we were and the location of the animal.)

In order to get back to our house we needed to go up the paved road and then turn down our dirt road. Our house was the last house on the dirt road so we were not close to it at all.  To do this, we needed to walk toward the animal. As we started to walk up the paved road the animal began to walk toward us. We decided to take a short cut to our dirt road through a wooded hill. Apparently, the animal was familiar with the area and was already headed in our direction down the dirt road once we reached it. At this point I am focused on Lucie when my husband says to me "get going!" The animal is now running after us and I am terrified at what could happen. Ron hands off the garage door opener to me like it's an Olympic torch and Lucie and I sprint to the house with Ron not too far behind. 

Now, sprinting typically isn't very difficult, but at 8,000 feet I was huffing and puffing like I was going to fall over! Who am I kidding, it would have been just as hard if I was still in Texas, I'm not in shape! Once we were in our garage, we jumped in the FJ and took off down our dirt road curious to see what was chasing us. As we drove down the road we saw the animal standing on the road. As we approached, the animal disappeared into the trees. We then hear a ladies voice yelling "Bella". We pulled into a driveway where we heard the voice coming from and we met Bella.

 (Not actually Bella since I had forgotten my camera.)

Bella is a two year old Newfoundland. I could hardly stop laughing at the fact that we were being chased by a gentle giant! We visited with Bella's owner who was very sweet and a pleasure to speak with. Bella was just gorgeous and full of energy. She typically wears a bell so that her owner knows where she is but it broke and she had not replaced it yet.

When you look at a Black Bear and Bella from a distance there are similarities.

Thankfully, we met Bella instead!

This beautiful sunset was the perfect ending to our day.

What amazing adventures will we have next?

Coming Soon - Lucie the Mountain Hiker Explorer