Two Bears and a Moose

It was a beautiful sunny weekend here in the Flathead Valley. A much needed respite from rain rain and more rain. Today we returned to the scene of Tom's fateful bear encounter one year ago to remember -- and run. There were seven of us and we all had bear spray. Which was a good thing because we saw two humongous black bears (that were brown). The second was bounding down the trail right towards Deb, who was leading the group back to the beginning of our run. It was pretty exciting in the safety of our numbers.
We stopped along the way and Tom recounted his encounter. With props.

Here (above) is the first bear sighting. This was about 2 feet into our run. We had barely left our cars when Iris (who I was super stoked was in town and came with us and has better pictures on her blog of this run than I do) kept saying "bear, bear, bear, no you guys BEAR!" It was pretty funny. Especially Tom's response, which was like he was going to personally give it a talking to.

Saturday, Ted and I roadtripped to Fernie, B.C. (that's in Canadia :p) and hiked up to the Island Lake Lodge right outside town. It was really pretty and a lot of fun.

Ted spotted this moose. It was pretty close.

I think rain is supposed to be back in the forecast so I'm really glad we had this incredible summery weekend. Next weekend I am going to Wyoming to pace Leslie at the Bighorn 100. It's going to be really fun!