The day started off normal enough. It was to be our last morning in Montana, Kalispell to be exact, and then it was off to Idaho to hit the Hiawatha Trail and Post Falls thereafter to visit an uncle I hadn’t seen in 28 years.

The only thing on our “agenda” for the day, other than driving of course, was a breakfast meet up with my long lost buddy Gary, an old friend from middle school / little league days (thanks Facebook).

Gary had actually already planned to have breakfast with a work cohort/friend of his, Harold (and his wife), and we were just tagging along. It’s pretty cool that we were able to connect at all. In any other day and age this meeting wouldn’t have happened. Thanks to technology (our blog, Facebook, “The Interwebs”) Gary could see that we were in this part of the country and connect with us and make our little reunion possible. Pretty sweet.

After arriving we quickly learned that Harold lived just outside of town and the day before they had trapped a mama Grizzly bear and her 2 cubs on his property. Not only that but this very morning they (Montana Fish & Game) would be tranquilizing, tagging, weighing, etc. etc. the bears and would we be interested in coming with them to watch? Um, does Prince like to lick stuff? YES, we wants to come!

I’m not sure how many times in our lives we’re going to have the opportunity to see us some Grizzly bears, and if it were to happen again I’d imagine it might be in a forest somewhere with Bree and I spraying bacon spray on one another hoping the other would be the main course. Jusssssst kidding honey, we both know that of course I would artfully distract the bear and be eaten first as you escaped to write the best selling screen play of the tragedy, become uber famous, and continue your travels in your new 50′ triple decker tour bus/rv hybrid you name “Mama Bear” with your annoyingly ripped euro director boyfriend you met on the set during filming in Aspen… Bitch.

Wait, sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, bears, right. We were in for that. We drove out to Harold’s property and jumped into trucks with them (and others who’d shown up there) to drive out to where the bears were being held. As we pulled up to the property we saw the bear cages parked around.

We didn’t know if the bears were still in them until we opened the doors to get out and the smell of putrid elk meat (bait) and bear hammered our nostrils like a 1989 Hulk Hogan body slam. It was overwhelming to say the least. I immediately switched to mouth breathing while Bree opted for some vapor rub under the nose. We soon noticed that just down the driveway and off to the side in a clearing they were working on one of the cubs so we made our way over. They had already finished with the boy cub but had the girl cub laid out on a ground cover and were working away on her – taking measurements, vital signs, claw lengths. You know, all the usual captured bear information stuff. We ended up staying there for quite a while and all-in-all it was a super cool experience. Here’s some pics and a video we snapped during “The Great Grizzly Bear Encounter of 2011”.

VIDEO BELOW – CLICK TO WATCH

And as if that all wasn’t enough of a morning, after we left the bear scene Harold and Darrell (sorry if I spelled your name wrong Darrell) took us around even more and showed us how/where they grow lentils (I had no idea what a lentil plant even looked like or how they were produced before this), an essential oil distillery where they were currently working on producing dill oil, AND the actual field where they were growing and harvesting the dill they were using to make the oils that day.

AMAZING. WHAT A DAY!!! It’s very cool what can happen when you’re able to spend your days without a specific agenda and can be open to whatever experiences that might happen to unfold or present themselves. I’m constantly in a state of gratitude for being able to live this adventure.

Tally ho…

Grizzly,
Matt