Grizzly Bear meets Grizzly Boy...

We are all 17 days into Ted's adventure,  and doing great!!! We have heard from Teddy several times over the past few days, whenever he ducks into town to resupply food, he hopes for a cell signal to give us a call.  He has just left Big Bear City (also known as Highway 18) on the map.  For us, that means he is about 2 inches up from the starting point. For Teddy, that means he is 265 miles up from the starting point.  Crazy, right??

So, speaking of bears, Teddy had his first, and hopefully last, grizzly bear encounter yesterday.  He was walking along when he heard a loud roar - a sound like no other he has ever heard.  He knew immediately that it was a bear, and said he was pretty frightened.  He wasn't sure if the bear was attacking something, mating, or just roaring.  He grabbed a granola bar and his knife, leaving his backpack aside, and went to further investigate.  He eventually came up to where he could see the howling, growling bear, which was a grizzly, but it was in a cage.  And the cage was behind a fence.  He was thinking, what the hell is this?  He found out that there is a farm, where animals, such as grizzly bears, are brought and trained to be in movies.  Really?? Are they kidding?? And don't you think that should have been stated somewhere in some book so hikers don't have heart attacks on the spot?? Poor documentation on their part, but it certainly made for a good story for Ted to share.

His other creature encounters have been scarce.  One worth mentioning that would have freaked me out was while hiking on an incline up a mountain, as he was leaning forward, he said a coral snake slithered by his face, but no harm done there either.  I had hoped he would have snapped a picture, but I guess the little guy caught him a bit off guard.  Oh well.

So the best part of my day, and this blog entry, is the picture I received of grizzly boy, a.k.a. Scarecrow.  As you can see, he has thinned down a bit, and has finally grown some facial hair.

Hey, I wonder if grizzly boy is the reason the grizzly bear was roaring...


Until next time,
The Thruhiker's Wife