Bear Encounter


My husband of twenty-five years and I were off for the weekend celebrating our anniversary and decided to hike the trails of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We were headed back down from the top of Clingman's Dome when we saw this black bear twenty or thirty feet away from us and another couple, off the trail. He was browsing in the blackberries and stopped to stare at us. When he started coming toward the trail I dropped the camera and started backing away and noticing that I was the only one in flip flops... fortunately he was pretty young and didn't want to get in to a thing with a bunch of tender pink people. Yaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

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