We've been to the Mountains and we've seen bears!

Well, we can now say we've seen the black bears of the Smoky Mountains from an up close and personal perspective. We arrived at our cabin a week ago Saturday night. The cabin has 3 levels, each with decks that wrap around half of the cabin. The main level is really the second floor. The grill & hot tub are on the patio on the second floor.

So we were grilling some hamburgers and hotdogs, when Donnie said "Anne, Um... there's a bear over there". The bear was right by the cabin, walking around it! We all ran inside and grabbed our cameras. We were obviously all excited because we got a lot of blurry pictures, indicating we were in a hurry and not taking the time to focus! But we did get some good shots! At one point the bear had walked around to the front of the cabin, then just sat up and posed for us! It was quite the experience.

About 3 days later, the boys were out on the patio in the hot tub and Grandma was sitting in the rocker talking on her phone. Suddenly an adolescent black bear cub poked it's head around the deck. It had climbed up the stairs! Grandma stood up, stomped her feet and said "shoo, shoo". The bear quickly went back down the stairs and off into the woods. All in all they weren't too scary- at least from the safety of our cabin.