Last weekend, we went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We rented a huge chalet at the top of a mountain in Gatlinburg and just chillaxed.
When I was little, my parents took me and my brothers there for a vacation or two, and my older brother Brian has been taking his family there for the past several years. My parents eventually started going with them too. Last year, Stan and I and my younger brother Jason and his girlfriend Hailey went too. This year, Stan's mom and dad (Cookie & Norm) came too! So, we had twelve people. And two bears.
The first bear arrived in a very non-traditional way. My dad discovered that the chalet next door was uninhabited and that we could get onto its porch. He also discovered that the view from the chalet next door was a million times better than our view, so he called everybody over.
As we were standing on the other chalet's deck, a bear WALKED OUT ONTO THE DECK OF OUR CHALET!!! My nephew Rider saw him first and started screaming and lunging and pointing and running and basically having a panic attack. "There's a bear! He's on our porch! He just came out the door over there!" And, we're all like, "What bear? I didn't see a bear?" And he's like, "It wasn't a bear, it was a bear in a costume. I mean, it was a man in a bear costume!" Apparantly, some kind of psycho in a bear costume had taken over our chalet during our short absence!
So, we sent over my dad and Brian to find out what was going on. They emerged onto the deck and the bear seemed to be long gone. Then, the bear came out of the door too and ATTACKED THEM!! Dad and Brian fought back and wrestled that bear and basically scared him away!
We all ran back over to our chalet and Dad and Brian said that he ran out of the chalet and took off up the road. So, Rider and my other nephew Wyatt (ages 9 & 11) walked up the road a little bit to see if they could catch a glimpse of him running away.
In the meantime, the adults returned to our chalet's porch and the bear (who had not run up the road but had been hiding in the chalet) joined us. He asked for a beer, and we gave him a Bud Light. He took a seat in a rocking chair next to the hot tub.
Ok, so it was Stan in a bear costume.
And the boys thought it was a pretty good stunt. Later, Rider dressed up in the bear costume and stood in the driveway waving at cars going by. A few of them stopped to take a picture.
Later that day we drove into the park for sightseeing and a picnic.
The park is home to 1,500 black bears. That means that, on average, there are two bears for every 1 square mile. A lot of people see real bears during their trip. Stan and his mom saw two different bears as we were driving through the park. We were driving fast, and they only caught a glimpse. I was very jealous.
But, later that night, I was the first to spot a bear walking directly below the deck of our chalet. He wasn't the least bit afraid of us. He even stopped, sat down, and looked at us for a while.
It's true. Everyone needs a good, smart bear.
