Bears In Fun Valley, CO

September 5, 2007

Black bears have been coming into the campground nightly for about a month. Many people have seen them while walking around after dark. And every morning we seen many garbage cans turned over with the contents all over the ground. (Pictured are Mary and Dave with a bear looking around the tree and helping them find their way back to Fun Valley………yeah, right!)

One evening Mary, Dave and Veronica drove to our site in their pickup and said, “Come join us! We’re looking for bears!” Joni was already in her PJs, but she quickly changed her clothes and was ready in about 1 minute to join them. Delton decided not to go – he’s said he has seen bears before………

We circled the campground slowly with our eyes glued to the garbage cans and trees. Bears like to climb trees. We came upon an overturned can and slowed down. We heard some funny noises. Veronica said the bear had just climbed the tree! We stopped and looked. Sure enough, there he was. High up in the tree!

We got out of the pickup and flashed our flashlights up in the tree. Since it was so dark, our flashlights didn’t light up the tree very much, so most of our pictures didn’t come out well at all. Pictured is the bear we saw climbing down. As you can see - he was very big! We got back into the pickup and waited. After about 1 hour, he finally started down the tree. As he almost reached the ground, Dave turned on the headlights to get a good picture and the bear darted back up again. We waited for about another 45 minutes. The bear started down again. Some other people in another pickup started snapping pictures. The bear, again, ran back up the tree.

We decided we’d had enough! We had a great time and it was getting late.

The next morning I looked out our windows and I could see 5 garbage cans that had been turned over during the night – with trash everywhere. All I would have had to do was to stay awake all night and looked out the windows!!!!!!One day Dave and Delton decided to repaint a wooden bear which was set up at the top of a mountain across from Fun Valley. He's there so all can look up at the mountain and see a bear walking across the mountain top. It looks very real from below.

Earlier in the season, Ron and Trude (Delton’s brother and his wife) were walking to our camp site from their cabin. As they walked past the Fun Valley restaurant they saw people shining their flashlights up in a tree. Sure enough – there was a bear up there. Trude came running to our spot to get us to come and look but he was gone by the time we got there. He had gotten frightened and ran away.
Pictured is Fun Valley after a rain. Could a rainbow be more beautiful than this - from mountain to mountain. This has nothing to do with bears but it's just plain pretty!