This Ain’t Jellystone Park, Booboo

No, our cabin is in the El Dorado National Forest on Echo Summit. It sits one mile off Hwy 50.

If you continue one more mile on Echo Road you’ll see Echo Lake, where I spent my childhood summers. Pure bliss.

Going up to the cabin now is l’il bittersweet, for many reasons. It’s my mom’s favorite place though and I try to drive her up there as much as possible. I’ll post more pics and stories later.

For now I just wanted to show you pics of an early morning visitor that meandered through last week.

Hello?!?

Note: All of these photos were taken through our cabin window. I won’t say we weren’t in danger, we were. But I felt at least safe enough to grab my camera and snap.

It was right around 8 a.m. and I saw movement coming our way. Something dark. Too short to be a person. Too big to be a child.

Ruh-roh.

Mom! MOM! There’s a BEAR out there!

“Oh. Really? Where?” My mother asked in a really irritating calm manner.

There! I uttered in between halting breaths.

“Oh!” She says, and holds Sadie, her boston terrier, up to see the bear out the window.

I kid you not.

“He’s just ‘grubbin,’” she explains, as if this is a routine happening.

Um, no. I’ll admit, I haven’t spent as much time at Echo since I’ve grown up and I’m aware of the increasing bear population, but this was a first for me.

“Grubbing” is apparently when the bear rips tree trunks apart to find bugs and beetles to ‘grub’ on.

After he sampled that tree trunk’s offering he made his way down the hill.

BY OUR CAR!!!

Right outside the window!!!

At this point, Sadie begins chirping barking and I started banging on the wall.

Which proved too much for Yogi the bear, who lumbered off in the other direction. Away from the cabin. Far, far away.

Here’s the irony – I watch Mom’s breathing like a hawk. Any shortness of breath can be very serious with her anemia resulting from Lymphoma. So, particularly when we’re at 7500’ elevation, I’m on pins and needles with her. But after this morning visitor it was ME that couldn’t catch my breath. I was close to hyperventilating.

Which brought some sort of sordid amusement to Mom. (Yes, we have warped senses of humor.) The more I wheezed, the more she giggled.

A while later I tiptoed outside, looking in all directions, and climbed up to look at the bear’s breakfast buffet . . .

. . . formally a very large INTACT tree trunk.

Amazing. The entire experience was amazing.

As one person commented on Facebook, “So cool to be so close to such a magnificent creature. Lucky you.” Not quite the way I saw it at first, but in retrospect, yes . . .

Lucky me!

Have you ever seen any wildlife up close? What, and where?