Bears Bears Everywhere - July

Rain again today. We've had rain three of the past four days. Although we were in rain most of the day it never was hard enough to make a river on the trail. Got lucky this evening though, hiked 15.6 miles to MA route 20 where the Berkshire Lakeside Lodge is only .1 miles off the trail. Good place to dry out and eat delivered Chinese food.

Everybody sees bears except Pappy 12. How is it that I can hike 1300 miles and not see one stinkin' bear. This morning as Zero Hero (a Yankees fan no less) was passing me he asked if I saw the bear on a dirt road that we crossed 5 minutes back. No. Of course I didn't. Don't you know everybody sees bears except me?

For the next hour three separate southbounders warned us about a bear who was trying to get at some watermelon that some kind soul had put on the trail for hikers. You can easily guess that by the time I got there she and her two cubs were gone. Even Zero Hero saw this set of bears too.

Best Wife has seen a rattlesnake. Not me. Best Wife has seen a couple bears. Not me. Best Wife saw a copperhead eating a mouse. Not me. I'm sure my turn is coming.

The view in the second picture might be hard to figure. That's a cloud covering the middle part of a mountain ridge across the valley.

The sixth picture down is a beaverdam that has created the pond in the seventh picture. For five or ten minutes two beavers captivated all my attention as I watched them swim lazily around.

Every day for three days in a row we passed Doppler (fifth photo) as we hiked north and he south. On the third day I asked him how he is always hiking south but working his way north. Answer: a pickup truck and a dirt bike. He always hikes south to his motorcycle, rides it back to his pickup where he started that day, then drives the pickup north to where he will start hiking the next day. Then repeat.