Camping With Grizzlies

My family loved to camp.  It was the only type of vacation we ever took, and we loved it.  We had invented all kinds of games to keep us entertained.  The famous rock game came from my dad’s creative genius.  Camping is in my blood!

When I was about 12 years old my dad and mom decided to build a camper.  He was very creative with the design and it could sleep all of us inside – at that point there were 6 of us kids.  I took care of my siblings and the household while they built it.

Finally, it was finished.  We decided to go to Yellowstone for the very first trip in our new camper.  It was fun riding in the camper as we traveled.  We played cards, etc., and moved all around.  The only problem was that they had put up the end gate of the truck and when we stopped we were all trapped and couldn’t get out.  This made it nice for those riding up front to go into the store without having to take all of us that were trapped in the camper.  We would yell and holler for them to let us out, and sometimes they did.

My Aunt Roma came with us on this particular camping trip.  We loved it when she visited because she would tell us stories, sing us funny songs, and would play games with us for hours.  She was a very large woman with a very generous heart!

It was quite a project to get ready to leave our farm.  We had to get someone to take care of the animals, and had to herd our milk cow to a neighbor to be milked while we were gone.  We had to make sure that the crops and garden were watered well so we could leave.

We were going to stay at the Madison Campground in Yellowstone.  We had gotten off to a late start and didn’t arrive at our camp ground until well after dark, and my parents didn’t see the sign about not leaving food on the tables because of bears.

We made dinner in the dark – Slumgullion stew.  It is a soup made with hamburger, onions, and carrots.  We ate our supper and went straight to bed, leaving all of the dirty dishes, etc. on the table.

In the middle of the night I was awakened by my dad.  He was kneeling by the door of the camper, a flashlight in his hand, peering through the curtains.  I asked him what he was doing.  In a very firm rather scared voice he told me to be quiet!  We could hear something ripping our camp apart.  At one point our camper was bumped hard on the side.  My dad was scared because of the food that was in the refrigerator in the camper.  It was really rather hard to go back to sleep.

The next morning was one I will never forget.  Our camp had been ravaged by two huge grizzly bears.  They had smelled the food and demolished our camp.  They had bitten holes in our metal drinking cups, and eaten everything they could.  It was a mess.  My dad said they were so close to our camper that he could hear their stomachs growl.  The humps on the grizzly’s back stood higher than the picnic table.

A man in one of the campsites close to ours had heard the ruckus and thought the bears were going to hurt his boat.  He had come out of his trailer with a broom to scare it away.  The grizzly stood on his back legs and his head stood above the cabin on his boat.  The man quickly retreated into his trailer.

We were rather famous that day as other campers came to see our camp.  Some of them brought us food to replace what the bears had stolen.  It was all very thrilling—a trip I will never forget.