When we were on our Alaskan cruise three years ago we booked a special side trip so we could see some bears in the wild.  We climbed aboard a float plane in Ketchikan Alaska, flew to a more remote area, tramped through bear-infested forest, stood on an observation platform over a stream where salmon were so thick you could walk across them without getting your feet wet, scanned the area with binoculars, and saw a grand total of zero bears.

After buying an annual national park pass, and about 5 minutes after passing through the Yellowstone entrance near Cooke City I recounted this story to Mrs. Salad Is Slaughter and mused how we would probably get shut out once more on seeing bears in the wild.

Less than one minute later (that’s not an exaggeration) a rather large object came rushing down the hill and came to a screeching halt at the side of the road.  Mrs. Salad Is Slaughter slammed on the brakes.  Standing not 20 feet away from us was an American black bear.  “Holy shit,” we said staring at the bear.  The bear stared back at us.  We continued to look at the bear.  The bear backed away up the hill and stopped.  We looked at the bear and the bear looked at us.  Silence.  The bear backed up some more than darted behind some trees to hide.

Of course we were both so shocked at the sudden appearance of an American black bear that neither one of us had thought to grab our cameras and take a picture.  I tried saying “we’re never going to see any bears on this trip,” “we’re never going to see any moose on this trip,” and so on for the next couple of days but apparently that only works one time.  He was the first and last bear we saw in Yellowstone.

We continued on through the mountains, past more alpine meadows, waterfalls, and herds of bison on our way to our first stop at Canyon Village.  We saw lots of bison during the trip but for some reason I expected much larger herds.  The largest we saw had less than 50 individuals.

I’d have to put day one in Yellowstone as the highlight.  We had a close encounter with a bear, and we were the only people who saw him.