My First Bears Today!

Today I saw my first Mexican Black Bear cubs! We were driving back from a volunteer hike and three cubs were crossing the Basin road just above the campground. Mama bear must have crossed ahead of them and the cubs scampered across the road after her. They were SO CUTE, there are no words and no photos on the internet to do them justice! Although I had my camera I could not get a good photo of them, so I will wait and hopefully get to see them under better photographic conditions.

Their coats were black and shiny. They were roly-poly, extremely healthy looking and ran like the wind! Two of them stood up briefly after they were up on the side of the mountain to take a gander at our cars - I imagine to make sure we weren't chasing them. :-) They are busy beefing up for the winter season and one of their favorite calorie-dense foods, acorns, are plentiful this year. According to park biologist, Raymond, they will often break off branches to make a little "recliner nest" up in the oak trees from which they can lay back and gorge on acorns.

This last week I was busy with the campground, of course. I have been working on digging out the rocks, gravel & soil from under the bear boxes (food storage lockers). The bear boxes have been in place for up to 20 years I'm told and removing the debris may help prevent the mounting bolts that hold them to the concrete base from rotting away. It's hot, dirty work but, hey! I got to see a pretty big scorpion!

On my days off this week I mostly slept and recovered, baked some yukky pineapple/coconut beer batter bread, baked some really good English Muffin toasting bread, and cooked enough garbanzo beans & farfalle pasta with spinach & feta cheese to eat for at least a week and a half.

We had a doozy of a thunder storm with less than 0.3" of rain that drove out many campers. (The storm plus temps in the 50's made for great sleeping in the RV!) One camper is famous park-wide for their Porsche boxster breaking down on the Basin road that rainy night. They are still here enjoying their vacation here with a rental jeep, but we've been helping them with phone & wifi so they could arrange to have the car towed ultimately to Fort Worth to be repaired. (So I don't disappoint Stephanie & Steve, we simply call them "22" for their campsite. But we also have someone called Twitch and another I call Hooyah, A story for another day . . .)

From the Upper Burro Mesa hike today with Jane, Mike, Matt, Eva, Paul & me, here are some flowers, weird rocks, a bush called old man's beard, ferns, moss & lichen & a birdie. :-)

And, in case you want some more "cute" here are Tighe and Zuni grooming the other morning. Awww. . .

PS - Kenn & Linda are totally wiped out because they had a full campground the last two nights. Little thank yous like the following note left on the campsite marker make the exhaustion worth it!