Louise Sees a Bear!

 This young bear chose the fork of a massive limb as a place to take a nap. As it happened, that spot was about 25 feet directly above the loop road that goes around Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

(Scroll down for more photos. Click on photos to enlarge.)  

(Blog Note: Just for fun, I'm reposting one of my favorite blogs from June, 2022.)

Louise has had a lifelong desire to see a bear in the wild up close and personal. Well, maybe not that close and that personal, but still. . .

Our 50th anniversary trip to Alaska was great, but with one flaw: we did not see a bear. Well, actually, we did see a couple of bears on the bus trip to Denali, but so far away that to the naked eye they were mere specks. You can read about it here.

So great was her disappointment that when we got home from Alaska we went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and drove the Loop Road in Cades Cove several times. Did we see a bear? No.

So this past Monday we decided to make a day trip to Cades Cove. Just for fun. We eventually found ourselves at the end of a long line of very slow-moving traffic on the Loop Road. When we finally neared the head of the line we saw people getting out of their cars with cameras and cell phones and looking up into a tree that spread over the road. And in the fork of an enormous limb about 25 feet above us, a young bear, trying to take a nap and wondering what all the commotion was about.

A few minutes later as we finally drove away we saw another young bear running through a field about a hundred yards distant. Louise was happy. She had seen not one, but two bears. Close enough, but not too close.

My telephoto lens was broken, so I made these photos with the 16-50mm lens on my Fuji X-T20 and cropped them severely. That they still look quite good is a testimonial to the Fuji 24-megapixel sensor.

                      Waking up with a yawn. . .                        

     . . .he looks down in amazement. "What the heck. . .?     

  "Maybe I should just go down and bite them!"

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Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel    Cades Cove     Great Smoky Mountains National Park     bears     Fuji X-T20 camera     Fujicron XC16-50mm lens