It was back to Denver today. The trip up this morning took longer than expected. I was moving along pretty good until coming into Castle Rock. Traffic was at a snails pace and it took about 15 minutes to cover 2 miles. A car was against the retaining wall and the front end was pretty smashed in. A little further up was a pickup truck in about he same shape. Looked like both drivers were OK, but pretty rattled. I know I would be. With the Police, the wrecked cars and two big tow trucks, we were down to one lane and everyone trying to merge together. I got to the office about 9:30. I started back to the Springs at 4:40, was home by 6PM. The traffic back was heavy but everyone was moving at the speed limit.
I really didn't want to walk this evening, but I did a quick change and grabbed my hiking pack and was out the door before I could even talk myself out of it. Made my way up the street and into Bear Creek Park
http://adm.elpasoco.com/PARKS/Pages/BearCreekNatureCenter.aspx . I started out on the same route that I had taken yesterday for about the first mile and then caught a side trail. Today I can confirm how Bear Creek Park got it's name. As I was hiking along the top of a gully I came around the bend and about 30 yards on the other side of the gully, it looked like a there was a deep hole on the side of the hill. I had been through here before and never seen this. Well this hole starts moving and get's up and starts walking away into the trees/shrubs. It was a decent size black bear, he turned and looked at me for just a second, but he was gone. It was 7PM, just about dusk.
I dug the camera out of the pack in the hopes that I might get another opportunity. After seeing him I started paying a little better attention. I did find several piles of scat that had apple in it. Not talking about a little apple but a lot. I have seen a couple of crab apple tree's in the area. Might have to head back over and see if I can spot him/her again. Since I had the camera out I snapped a picture looking back towards the mountains.
So I am up to 29/Miles for the month. Not bad, just need to keep after it. The diet is going OK, I could do better but cookies keep showing up in the kitchen. :-)
Happy Hiking
